re: Help me understand what the hell is going on with Deutsche Bank.

You'd probably get a better, more detailed answer from Doc in his thread, but basically the DOJ says DB owes $14 billion for selling bad mortgage backed securities before the financial crisis. They can't afford to pay that much, and they've been having some rough times these past two years. They'll either have to heavily dilute their shareholders or need a bailout (both will likely happen). That's a problem because Germany has been reluctant about bailing out other EU member's banks, instead preferring debt negotiations and dilution of shareholders. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and while she may have said she won't bail out DB, she most likely will.

There's also speculation that this is a response to the EU claiming thay AAPL owes about the same amount in taxes to Ireland. Our Treasury secretary advised them not to do it, but they ignored him and Ireland's protest of the decision. So we hit the biggest EU member in their biggest weakness. If this happened, I'm honestly quite impressed with our government for pimp slapping the EU.