Europe’s banks face a $2 trillion dollar shortage

Telegraph
"European banks face a US dollar “funding gap” of almost $2 trillion as a result of aggressive expansion around the world and may have difficulties rolling over debts, according to a report by the Bank for International Settlements. ...British banks have borrowed some $800bn in sterling to make dollar investments and loans. By mid-2007 they had accumulated what amounted to a $300bn net “short position” on the US dollar. The latest BIS data up to the third quarter of 2008 shows that this exposure has been trimmed by “deleveraging” but it still largely hanging over the UK financial institutions."