Originally Posted by MaDalton

actually there are a couple of things not quite correct:

first of all it's not "banks", this law is only temporarily and only for "Hypo Real Estate (HRE)". it will automatically expire on June 30, 2009

second: it will only happen if HRE is going bankrupt - or better: to prevent HRE from going bankrupt. cause in that case a couple of other banks and insurance companies might go under as well. which could crash German (and European) economy totally.

i'm not a supporter of this usually but in this case it seems to be necessary to have this as a last resort