As we said, the subprime mortgage crisis started in the USA but its effects spread also in other parts of the world. In particular, Europe suffered so strongly this crisis, also because of its banks, in fact, Europe has a heterogeneous banking system, caused by the fact that each European country has an independent one, which makes practically impossible for ECB to solve such a great problem. Despite the ECB is the main bank, alone cannot stave-off a continent-wide financial crisis.
While the American system has as a purpose to maintain separated the real economy to the financial sector, in Europe this aim is not pursued. The difference is given by the fact that America experienced the famous “Great Depression” which lead the system to focus on avoiding the collusion between banks and businesses, thanks to a slew of laws that prevent banks from being highly invested in US corporations. Europe, in contrast, never lived this kind of crisis, so it couldn’t learn how to defend itself. The heterogeneity of the European banking system presents another problem, in fact, the euro brought many benefits to individual countries decreasing interest rates for consumers and making more viable the mortgage lending in countries such as Italy, Ireland and Spain. These facts combined with relatively lax lending policies, created a pool of mortgages, that should be thought as “subprime”.
Only German banks have truly stringent lending policies, in fact, the 43% of the total home stock is own by residents, the rest part by landlords.
To sum up, the crisis has been so strong in Europe also because the ECB is almost exclusively concerned with the stability of the euro, and keeping inflation down, therefore does not have the authority to intervene directly in the banking system of an EU member state. But even if it had the power to intervene country by country basis, the financial crisis would not be the same throughout the continent, and local problems would still necessitate local solutions.