Please don’t get sick, the banks need the money

Wonderful contrasting news stories today:

The Catalan Healthcare system cuts 900 million euros

Cuts have been introduced to the public expenditure of the Catalan healthcare system. Today, the Catalan Minister for Health, Boi Ruiz, met with a hundred directors and presidents of Catalan hospitals to announce the measures to cut the budget of the Catalan healthcare system. The Catalan Government is the public administration in charge to provide public healthcare to Catalan citizens and is responsible for all the primary health centres and hospitals, including the main university hospitals. Ruiz announced a budget reduction of 900 million euros

And then this:

CatalunyaCaixa would need at least 1,500 million euros to reach the 10% of ‘core capital’

The new Spanish law on savings banks, which is stricter than Basel III, will require savings banks to have 10% of ‘core capital’ by September 2011. Currently, CatalunyaCaixa has 6.9% and would need between 1,500 and 1,700 million euros to reach the minimum requirement.

Naturally, the banks will be recapitalized in an obscure enough way (via FROB or some other scheme) to hide the true cost to taxpayers.