This is the official list of banks that are too big to fail

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Barclays bird blue protest protestor

AP Photo/Alastair Grant

A protester, dressed to look like the Barclays Bank logo, demonstrates outside the Barclays Bank annual general meeting for shareholders, in central London,Thursday, April 25, 2013.

"Too big to fail" became a household phrase during the financial crisis, when bailouts in 2008-09 provided a safety net for the crumbling global banking system.

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As a response to the crisis, the G20 countries set up the Financial Stability Board, a global watchdog for financial institutions. One of its responsibilities is to identify the banks that can't go bust without causing a domino effect.

Because of that, the FSB has just published the names of the banks that are officially TBTF, or in the language of the Financial Stability Board, they're "global systemically important banks" or GSIBs.

The banks are split into four buckets, with each corresponding to higher loss absorbency requirements, based on how important to the global financial system the bank is. In short, the more important the bank, the more capital it will be required to hold.

Here's the full list:

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too big to fail GSIBs

Financial Stability Board

There's only one change this year - Spanish lender BBVA is out, and the China Construction Bank is in, reflecting the way that the world economy is changing.

Other than that, all the groups stay the same - bucket numbers 2, 3 and 4 are still precisely where they were.

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