“Excessive” is the word that Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch president of the Eurozone countries, used for the Obama Justice Department’s decision in mid-September to seek mammoth fines from Deutsche Bank. The German bank’s various mortgage-underwriting violations were committed in the days before the financial crisis of 2008, and with the encouragement of U.S. housing regulators. The Obama administration is in a class of its own when it comes to collecting fines: $200 billion and counting, from a variety of business actors. In the autumn of 2013 it collected the largest fine in corporate history—$13 billion—from J.P. Morgan. Morgan Stanley paid $2.6 billion in a Madoff-related affair. Citibank paid $4 billion.

Now the administration wants $14 billion from Deutsche Bank. Even if that figure gets negotiated down, the fine is high enough to be worrisome. DB is both rickety and systemically important—the world’s sixth-largest investment bank, and the top European clearinghouse for derivatives. Now the cost of DB’s credit insurance is rising and hedge funds are circling. DB’s share price has fallen over the last year from $28 to $12. The fine the Obama administration has in mind is thus is equal to the company’s entire market capitalization.