Major European economies have announced multi-billion euro rescue schemes to shore up their banks.

Germany has approved a package worth up to 500bn euros (£393bn; $683bn), France will spend about 350bn euros and Spain has set aside 100bn euros.

The bulk of this money will be used to guarantee lending between banks – part of a plan agreed to this weekend by the 15 nations that use the euro.

Meanwhile, President George W Bush said nations were taking “decisive action”.

Speaking with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, he said the US was continuing to work closely with Europe.

The cash injection by France, German and Spain was echoed by similar moves by Austria and Italy.

Austria is to spend up to 85m euros, while the Italian government pledged to inject as much money as needed without giving any figures.

France and Germany will also use the cash to take stakes in ailing banks.

The announcements helped to lift investor confidence, with stock markets rising worldwide.

Two-fold plan

The two-fold plan involves guaranteeing lending between banks and taking stakes in financial institutions – similar to the bank rescue in the UK announced last week.

“This is a massive engagement” French President Nicolas Sarkozy

The US is also getting ready follow in Europe’s footsteps and purchase stakes in financial institutions.

“We are designing a standardised programme to purchase equity in a broad array of financial institutions,” said Neel Kashkari, the treasury official in charge of the US government’s $700bn bail-out package.

Monday’s other key developments included:

– The UK government said it would inject up to £37bn of taxpayers cash into Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS
– US shares, tracking earlier gains in Europe and Asia, rose strongly in early trading as investors welcomed fresh efforts by global leaders to end the recent financial turmoil
– The world’s major central banks said they would offer financial institutions an unlimited amount of short-term dollar loans to help stem the crisis
– The Icelandic stock exchange said share trading would remain suspended until Tuesday because of continuing “unusual market conditions”.

‘Massive’

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would offer up to 40bn euros to provide banks with the financing they needed via a public company in which the state would the only shareholder.

“This is a massive engagement,” he said.

He added that no financial institution would be allowed to collapse.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the measures being taken would only work if they were accompanied by more robust regulation that will curb “market excesses.”

“The package passed by the German government will serve the financial system and ought to serve to protect the citizens and not just serve to protect the banking system,” she said.

Fund

Unlike France, Germany and Britain, Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that Spain did not need to take stakes in any banks because its banks were solvent.

However, last week the Spanish government announced the creation of a 30bn euro fund to buy assets from Spanish banks to help stabilise the lending industry and unfreeze credit.

At present banks are reluctant or unable to loan cash to fellow financial institutions due to fears about whether the money will be paid back.

It is this lending between banks that traditionally lubricates the banking system, freeing up cash for lending to private individuals and other firms.

News reported by The BBC

It might be tempting from a UK perspective to crow about the latest economic growth indicators.

British growth, at 0.2% for the second quarter (announced a few weeks ago) may have been paltry but it compares favourably with other leading European economies.

Spain registered growth at a snail’s pace of just 0.1% over the three month period. Germany’s economy contracted by 0.5%, while France and Italy chalked up a decline of 0.3%.

But any hubris is misplaced. Margins for error are small and there could be subsequent revisions of the figures. And few economists would predict that the UK is strongly placed to avoid negative growth at some stage over the next year.

Implications

Most alarming for British policymakers is the effect a eurozone slowdown will have on UK companies. Only yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of England, at his quarterly Inflation Report media conference, was citing export led growth as a positive factor for the economy next year.

Whatever happened to consumer demand in the wake of the housing market slowdown, he seemed to suggest, exporters could take up the strain.

But export driven expansion will be hard to achieve if Britain’s biggest trading partner is in recession. Half of the UK’s overseas sales of goods and services go to the eurozone. So a slowdown there will have significant implications for order books and jobs.

Consultancy Capital Economics has already run a slide rule across the trade numbers. It believes that total goods and services exports in the UK could be cut by 5% as a result of the European downturn. This might reduce UK GDP growth by as much as 1.2%.

All this assumes that exporters wont get a boost from the weaker pound.

Stark conclusion

Even so there is a stark conclusion to be drawn here – that a stagnant British economy could be pushed into recession by a continued slide in the major economies across Europe.

British exporters are aware of these harsh headwinds from across the Channel.

The outdoor clothing manufacturer Barbour, for example, told the BBC they were having to work hard to hold sales levels in Germany and knew things would get harder.

They were concerned about the German economic downturn and knew they were in for a tough winter.

All in all the British economy is in for a rough enough ride as it is, without being dragged down further by the eurozone’s problems.

News reported by The BBC