If you think the risk posed by hugely levered US banks that were too big to fail was terrifying, then consider the following: in November 2011 the Financial Stability Board, a coordinating body for national financial regulators, published a list of systemically important banks, in other words, the too big to fail list. Of the twenty-nine banks named, only eight were US banks; seventeen were European. The Europeans have managed to build a system that is too big to bail, which is the real reason why a bunch of putative lefties are squeezing the life out of their welfare states.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 147