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> eg without the union Italian and Spanish and French banks would long have gone bankrupt

Not french banks. At least from IMF representatives pov.

Source: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/wp09201.pdf

Excerpt: "French banks were not immune but proved relatively resilient to the global financial crisis reflecting their business and supervision features".

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And not Spanish banks. It was some spanish "cajas", not banks. Can seem similar, but falls in a different category.

A quick Google suggests 'cajas' is closer to a credit union, though I'd love to hear more about the difference between a 'cajas' and a bank and the cultural expectations for both. (I would have been surprised if that happened to a US credit union.)

> I'd love to hear more about the difference between a 'cajas' and a bank

I think that Credit Union would made a good definition of a caja de ahorros [1], More or less equivalent. We could say that some spanish credit unions poorly managed by politicians were rescued with the money from all spaniard's taxes, but not the banks (and not all credit unions).

[1] 'a Cajas' does not exist. The singular is 'Caja'

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