It looks like Too-Big-To-Fail isn't just an American problem.
Which planet have you been living on in the last couple of years? Banks, even whole countries are being bailed out all over the place in Europe. This is done by complex financial constructs, so the tax payers don't even know they are paying for it until they (or their children) get the bill.
I know of no country "bailed out" except from Germany who went away after the 2nd WW. Marshall made it too easy for them to create the "German Ecoomic Miracle". Of course the USA did it to fight Communism, not out of
love and affection for the poor Germans who came out of the war mostly demolished.
If you are referring to Greece, most of the bail out money along with internal absurd taxes route from Greece to EU banks who had Greek - high risk - bonds. By bailing them out, they defeat the definition of "high risk", but anyway. Same goes for Portugal, Spain and now Cyprus.
These countries elect governments are advertized as "responsible". Except from Italians of course, which in Germany are depicted as "irresponsible". I can't see why not bailing out banks that should have failed long time ago, makes people irresponsible.
OFFTOPIC: Funny thing that I've read on the news: Bersani (the German/EU/IMF/ECB choice for Italy), went on and on saying that if Italian vote for Grillo (an ex-comedian turn politician, but if you read the wikipedia article about him, you'll find there's much more to him than vulgar jokes) they will turn like Greece in no time. It's funny because Greece did exactly what Germany/EU/ECB/IMF said so far and didn't work out (apparently).
Go figure...
