From Jeff Randall for The UK Telegraph:
When asked by a judge why he persisted in robbing banks, the serial offender replied: “Because that’s where the money is.”
For us taxpayers, this observation is now doubly true. The banks have captured our money twice over: as cash in their vaults and investments in their shares. ... We rescued them – and in so doing became their prisoners. ...
The global economy cannot function without big banks, they say: gigantism provides synergies, efficiencies and benefits of scale. What a hoot. Tell that to the shareholders of Citigroup, a banking behemoth, which all but disappeared up its own balance sheet in 2008, having had a wild (losing) punt on sub-prime mortgages. ...
There is a general perception that we don’t want banks to fail, not even bad ones. This is a mistake. We should be perfectly happy to see poorly run businesses disappear.
Read the rest here.
