And here, a strong capital position is the best buffer against shocks, regardless of where they come from. However, dealing with unknown dangers requires German banks to embrace a new risk culture. The crisis made us painfully aware of just how far removed from a sound culture of risk the risk culture was at many banks in Germany. 2.
Risk culture  One reason for an inadequate risk culture lies in the “too big to fail” problem, which was a central issue in the last crisis. The failure of banks that are very large or strongly interconnected might endanger the whole financial system – the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 was a case in point.