Although bail-outs helped contain the financial crisis in 2008, making bail-outs the norm would undermine the public finances and sow the seeds for future crises. To prevent this, policymakers are reforming resolution at both the global and European level. This will assure that banks can fail...

Banks cannot be made fail-safe. But they can be made safe to fail, so that the failure of a bank need not disrupt the economy at large nor pose cost to the taxpayer. In other words, banks can be made resolvable, and “too big to fail” can come to an end. To do so, the authorities, banks and...