While the American federal government is used to playing the role of financial backstop for the states, making loans and other guarantees to weaker EU members is a new role for Germany or France to play.
Given the precariousness of its credit rating, Italy needs the backstop of the ECB continuing to buy its bonds in order to prevent Greek-style default spreading.
I'm writing this on the Riverside promenade — precisely, on the half-length park bench facing the backstop of the ball field around West 103rd Street.
But there is also the backstop of the central government, which has formal debts amounting to only about 25% of GDP.
Without the backstop of the influential Mr Klaus, their future looks bleak.But the Czech left has hardly been a model of competence in recent years.
Because Andersen is a partnership, its partner-owners do not have a typical pension with the backstop of the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, which makes payments when companies go bankrupt.
With Martin considered the catcher of the present, and Montero and Romine the backstops of the future, the 39-year-old Posada is trying to adjust to his new role while keeping the lightest possible hand in his old one.
Risk officers at financial firms will be much more cautious in the wake of MF Global's demise, hurting independent brokerage firms like Jefferies that do not have the backstop of the Federal Reserve's discount window.
New legislation authorizing a backstop of the mortgage finance companies leaves it up to the Treasury secretary to decide whether to honor preferred dividend payments or to repay subordinated bondholders before the government, an S.& P. analyst, Victoria Wagner, said.
If these countries run into trouble, they will be able neither to draw quickly on loans nor to rely on the backstop of the European Central Bank, whose never-used bond-buying policy, Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), depends on there being a formal programme.
