The K&K Kreditanstalt ( or Credianstalt in English ) was the largest Central European bank at the turn of the XXth century. It survived the collapse of the Austrian Empire, and became known as the flagship of the Rotschild financial galaxy. And the end of the 20's, it seemed impregnable. It had huge assets, both loans and equity stakes in worldwide companies. Everyone knows the crash of 1929. But the second - and most damaging - wave of that crisis was prompted by the bankrupcy of the Creditanstalt on 11.5.1931. It's exposure acted as metastasis triggering a chain effect througout the world. The uncoordinated yet taional responses of national authorities led to a currency and trade war. the UK had to drop out of the gold standard. The ripple effect in Germany led to a sequence of political collapses, paving the way for the NSDAP. In France , it led to the "Front populaire". A Creditanstalt moment is a region- or even world-wide version of a Lehman moment...