The bail-ins are a bad joke. A very bad joke indeed.

If a bank goes belly-up it's for its own wrong-doings, that is true and its shareholders are punished by loosing their investment. But there are also and most specifically the supervision authorities who did not do their job and allowed it to happen. The job of a regulatory authority is above and most of all to keep the stability of the system. The public entrusts its money to the banks for reasons of reputation of this or that bank but also because above them exists (or at least it is supposed to exist) a supervision body which guarantees that the bank operates according to regulations and is solvent at all times. If the regulatory body does not do its job correctly then the banks go belly-up and we have a lot of trouble.

Now, the regulatory institutions are government bodies. So, my question is, why should depositors pay for a government body's leniency if not direct incompetence? It's a mistake done by the regulator so the state must pay and be held responsible for the incompetence of one of its bodies. Therefore, if trouble occurs, then, States (this being tax-payers) should pay. Then in the next election maybe the tax payers remember and vote for merit instead of politics.

Some 40 or 50 years ago, even 20 years ago, this thing of the bail-ins would be both an absurd and an outrage. However, in nowadays' Europe, where a tendency to punish wealth is surfacing with a lot of strength along with utter disrespect for money it is considered the new normal to have wealthy people paying for States' wrongdoings.

This is not inocuous, at all. Slowly but steadily money is pouring out of Europe in general (some countries are exceptions) but as more of these crazy ideas against wealth and money are implemented the more the money goes away for greener pastures.