"We cannot make any blanket guarantee," Mr. Chung said in an interview.

But don't give them any blanket guarantees or promises.

And if they were, the remedy would not be a blanket guarantee.

Critics say that any retailer offering a blanket guarantee is being naive - at best - given the workload of inspectors.

The blanket guarantees, they say, are the only way to persuade investors to take the risk and make the ultimate cost to the bank board less.

But what concerns most critics about granting blanket guarantees is that the incentive for the acquirer to sell off the assets carefully is diminished.

In normal times, the ending of the blanket guarantee would probably cause barely a ripple.

We could likewise reduce the blanket guarantee given for EIB loans from 65% to 50% of the amount of the loan.

Frequently, emergency liquidity support and blanket guarantees have been used to contain these crises, not always successfully.

The same month the Central Bank described as "heroic" the response in the run-up to the blanket guarantee of Ireland's toxic banks.