Banks used to inspire trust with marble halls and granite facades. The modern equivalent is a website that touts state guarantees bailing out depositors and other creditors. WestLB, the shakiest of Germany's state-owned wholesale banks, or Landesbanken, prominently displays an "overview" of the bank's many "protection mechanisms" on its site. Readers who click through are taken to a document that is comfortingly entitled "Belt and Braces".
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