This year's Nobel Prize in Economics goes to three experts who have worked extensively with banks and the financial system.

The American researchers Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig have fundamentally expanded and changed our understanding of why financial intermediaries exist, what they do and how vulnerable they are.

And they have derived some central insights that were not necessarily entirely new, also in a methodologically modern way and thus made them useful for further theoretical research.

At the same time, and the Nobel Prize Committee has also remained true to itself, the research work that is now primarily being considered dates back many years - also for good reasons: Whether new ideas and concepts are really fundamentally revolutionary only becomes apparent after a long period in which they have been discussed, examined, doubted, tested, refined and yet not discarded.

Fortunately, a (primarily) political message is not associated with this award.

Nevertheless, the current award focuses on what is still a highly explosive economic policy question: How can a profitable and secure banking and financial system be organized?

And what is required and allowed to support it in crises?

And not only because new concerns about Credit Suisse are making the rounds, but also because Ben Bernanke, one of the award winners, was one of the most important decision-makers during the last major financial crisis.

At that time, as President of the US Federal Reserve, he orchestrated gigantic purchase programs for securities.

They are now part of the toolbox of all major central banks.

Bernanke's decisions were and are, the price doesn't hide that, quite controversial.

Finally, it should be remembered that it was no coincidence that one or more authors published a "white paper" under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in autumn 2008 about a digital currency called Bitcoin - the impetus for a new technological development whose supporters once again raise the question of who Diamond and Dybvig already asked: What are banks actually for?

And what is a bank?