“Banksters”, an emotive term coined by Father Charles Coughlin, a commentator in the early thirties as the practices of bankers and financiers during the boom in the lead up to the Wall Street crash in late 1929.
It seems that the Banksters are back in 2010 as the financial position of much of the developed world stutters, banks are making heaps by creating a mountain of debt.
Greece is effectively bankrupt, the UK and US have public debt at a level just below their GDP, the overhang of retail housing debt in the US is huge, and at some point the Germans will get sick of having their economy effectively underwriting the value of the Euro, but the bankers are back from the brink, especially in the US, making lots of money for themselves while the financial systems remain broken.
In Australia, small businesses are starving for capital, Governments appear generally incapable of responsibly running public finance in the face of the temptation to pork barrel regularly due to the election cycle, but we have a bogus debate about the evils of public debt at around 6% of GDP, when it is dwarfed by private debt built to fund the banksters lifestyles, at around 150% of GDP. The clincher, yesterday the Commonwealth bank announced a profit of 6.1 Billion dollars. I have no problem with profits, even large ones, but this one is in the context of a government guarantee of deposits for the major banks during the crunch, which led to a flight of capital from those who could provide competition to the big 4 banks, reducing competitive pressure, and fattening the remaining banks margins as a result .
The real question is “will we wake up in time?”
