Yeah, Pasi paints with a very broad brush. But there are those out there that could use that sort of rhetoric seriously, so its usually fun to argue a bit against them for training.
People always seem to rag on the public sector, and how the government always (and I mean always) finds a way to saddle everything in endless bureaucracy and indecision.
Well newsflash for you - the banking sector is already like this. Also its sole purpose in the world is to make that 70% wealth factor into 100%. That's all banks know how to do is to amass greater and greater levels of profit and wealth.
I'm not going to say everything is their fault - there were too many people too dumb to understand that debts have to be repaid at some point, but at the same time the bank actually gave these people a loan. The only people who should be doling out loans to people who clearly can't pay them are fine, respectable, upstanding pillars of society like Big Vinnie. That way when the person defaults it's just their kneecaps and not the entire goddamn planet (for reasons I cannot discern). What is the banks' fault is investing shittons in rubbish, aka gambling badly.
I do resent how this has ended up, to be honest. I don't see why millions (billions, even) of people should suffer because of events outside their control. Generally, these are the honest, hardworking people who could keep up their mortgage repayments who end up suffering because of some absurdly well-paid idiot. Why should 'the 95%' suffer severe austerity measures? Why should the hard-working Greek people end up getting almost collectively fired because their leader spent their money for them along with money they didn't have? It isn't their fault, and above all else that's what people resent; a forced share in responsibility and culpability when they themselves are actually free of wrongdoing.
Very few in the western world understand the amount of protocol and procedures that goes into keeping this zeitgeist that we call civilization running. But at least most of it is under public survey and readily available to be stopped if done wrong.
And as you say, private banking is a web of paper-hell already, one written by people with ignoble intentions and no public accountability. The bailout of American banks in 2008 should have publicized the banks and taken the metaphorical kneecaps of the suits that allowed this to grow. Not give the rich a bailout and a pat on the back for throwing the rest of the world into chaos.
I don't see a problem in a publicised bank which loans money not just to the government but to individuals, one which if run right could actually make money for the government and do so in such a way as to be ethical and not prone to the same contagion as the rest of them. The only problem is a number of banks have been part-nationalised and nothing has changed within their inner circle or their actual way of doing shit. Plus the governments seem shit-scared of keeping hold of what could be a goddamn goldmine and then sell them off at a loss. And somehow this is a "good deal" for the taxpayer.
This clearly isn't the solution.
If any other person or organisation becomes debt-ridden the government would never have done anything to help them as they brought it on themselves. Why is a bank different? The banks should have been obliged to be the creditors for the bailout money, and paid it back with interest to the governments at a later time. Clearly our governments lack business acumen in the same way that the banks do.
I suspect much of the reasons governments keep selling off their banks must be because of bad advice from economic "advisors". Which is like asking a religious fundamentalist to give you a neutral analysis on the theory of evolution, except the fundamentalists have someone hijacked the theory in the name of their religion.
Anything that has enough power to make governments kneel without democratic input is a threat to society. Banks that bet on being bailed out should be ripped apart and rebuilt, kept safe from private banks that would love nothing else than buying up the new and weaker banks, and left to earn the government money. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason you need private banks would be for the more risky and quicker deals, which should be filled with high-risk capital from those willing to invest it in high-risk investments.
