Exactly ten years ago today, the Bundestag and Bundesrat passed the Financial Market Stabilisation Act (Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetz). One month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the then Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück explained that there had not been a financial crisis of such a magnitude in 80 years.
To “avert the danger”3] an extensive rescue package was put together, comprising up to € billion in government guarantees for financial institutions. Ten years on from this Herculean effort, many citizens are quite rightly asking how much it cost to bail out the banks. Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz recently put the bill at around € billion for central and state government.