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Comment by Kristine1975 | Hacker News Reader

Kristine1975

I'm from Germany and the troubles of the Deutsche Bank please me to no end. The only thing I'm scared of is that it will be declared "too big to fail" and bailed out with tax money, while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero".

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As an Irish person living in Germany (partially as a result of an extremely ill-advised bank bailout), it's quite amusing to watch. I've watched this exact scenario happen in my own country, except with retail "pillar" banks instead of investment banks. I compare bankers to the monarchy of old, they are completely unelected and hold a huge amount of power.

You can be sure that if the shit really hits the fan, Deutsche will be bailed out, no matter the cost. I would bet anything on this happening.

Deutsche will be bailed out, no matter the cost. I would bet anything on this happening.

The bank always wins :-(

> while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero".

Schleswig-Holstein just decided to drop any plans for the black zero, and doubled the funding for new police recruits. Additionally, we decided to also build more schools. And fix the infrastructure.

Maybe he can propose to sell some of the German islands to cover the bailout.

And then let Greece pay for the bailout! Good idea. We get rid of Sylt, and Greece has to pay.

Actually Greece has in a way already paid for a bailout of DB (+ other German & French banks). Just before the (famous?) PSI[1], the Greek state (through retirement funds, universities & other public and semi-public institutions) bought off a lot of (Greek) government bonds from these banks. Then the haircut happened. So instead for these banks to suffer the losses, they were moved to the taxpayer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_involvement

This is similar to saying I hope the nuclear plant blows up but I would really hate it if the government needs to clean it up.

In a way it is already too late.

The scandal is that DB has been allowed to grow this big.

If there is a too big to fail chart, DB will be at the very top of it.

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