The banks are run as personal Fiefdoms, disbursing loans to friends and relatives towards unviable projects,
thus exposing its depositors to great risks, and ultimately to the collapse of the bank.
The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the region into Middle and West Francia and therefore into a set of more or
less independent Fiefdoms which, during the Middle Ages,
were vassals either of the King of France or of the Holy Roman Emperor.