Well, exactly. For example, I am English. This means that I am a shareholder in a bank. How does this follow? Because the UK govt spent 50 billion pounds (about a hundred billion dollars) of taxpayer's money bailing out a subprime mortgage lender called Northern Rock. 50 billion pounds is an awful lot of money - it's about double the annual defence budget. Now, I'm not even a Northern Rock customer, I'd be happy if they'd gone bust because that, while a bitter pill for some, would have brought some sanity back to the housing market (yes I am a homeowner). Instead, we have this huge debt on our collective hands.