Do you know who was the president of Caixa Catalunya? Narcís Serra i Serra, who was major of Barcelona and minister of defense, vice president of Spanish government from 1991 to 1995, a politician.

You can see tons of Cajas suffering, but no private bank. Caja Madrid, Caixa Catalunya, Nova Caixa Galicia, Caja Sur, CCM, Bancaja... All of them had problems. When  the politicians and syndicalists who directed those "non profit banks" with politic interest instead of economic interest, we as a society suffer, and lots of people don't seem to see it, as one of the "solutions" the left give to the Spanish crisis is to create a huge public bank, when the public banks are the source of our crisis, and the private banks have had much less problems.

Yes, I know who is and was Narcís Serra, but I also know that here in Cataluña things aren't like on other places of Spain. Even though the Generalitat could force who could be the president of any caixa as they were public entities, they never did it.

Quite interesting that you didn't include "La Caixa" in there as there was also a caja yet the managers did a better job and not only made it grow, but they also made it economically healthy. And rumors say that the central government wanted to force a union between "La Caixa" Caixabanck and Bankia, but one of the condition was that Rato would become the president once Fainé retires. They said no and looka t what happened to Bankia.

And regular banks didn't suffer as much from this, although they did suffer and will continue to do it, because of 2 things:

1-Cajas were more involved in brick and mortar business than banks. And it's because they couldn't be involved in international operations, so their only sorce of income was personal credits, mortages and credits to construction companys. Given the situation we have, all three ways of income stalled and the problems because too big.

2-Banks, as private entities, they had acces to international credits, like the ones from the Eurobank, while cajas can't have acces to them. How much money does Santander owe to the Eurobank? A lot.

But, as I said to Player2, we're going off-topic here.

Porke hablais en ingles entre Españoles?

Os estais desviando del tema
y de los demas ya ni hablo, porke no tiene ni p... idea de lo ke hablan...

Es ridículo, lo sé, pero como ya tenemos asumido que aquí se habla en inglés... pues eso.

Además, siempre puede haber alguien de fuera al que le interese saber más del tema.