The Fund will start from national compartments but it will gradually, in eight years, mutualise to become a truly single European Fund. Underlying the new regime is the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) which dramatically changes the culture. It ends the era of the bail-out and moves us to the culture of the bail-in. Bail-in will be the rule, bail-out a rare exception.
If we look back over a slightly longer period, a clear lesson from history is that as people’s needs change and technology improves, so too does the form that money takes. Once upon a time, people used clam shells and stones as money. And for a while, right here in the colony of New South Wales, rum was notoriously used.