&gt; I think this bank is Exhibit A to the catastrophic excesses of the past 20 years.<p>Only partially related, I remember one of the German landsbanke (can&#x27;t remember its name) buying full one-page splashy ads in magazines like The Economist, back in 2007. Only one year later they went catastrophically under because they had bought in into the subprime lending and its derivatives&#x27; mania. I remember one of the directors saying something like &quot;we didn&#x27;t know what exactly we were buying, those products were too complicated for us, we trusted the people who had sold them to us&quot;. It&#x27;s fools all the way down.