a missed trick

spain has wrestled with the same financial sector demons as has the us, but their response has differed in one significant aspect: the spanish government didn't "bail out" their bad banks--they confiscated them. (which is to say, took ownership stakes with the money they gave them, instead of just pissing it away). people might be tempted to ask what a government could possibly do with a failed bank, but i would point out that, as an alternative, we have NOTHING to show for all the cash we squandered on ours, and even then they're STILL cheating us. (and, to add insult to the irony, the banks are naturally worse off for having cut the corners).

banks are, second only to insurance companies, de facto rackets incorporated to extort and cheat, (even, it can be argued, steal), and should not be trusted further than their marble buildings can be thrown. islam, for all its bad press, at least gets this part right. (in islam, echoing jesus' tossing the moneylenders' tables in the temple, and much the same as our own usury laws, only set at a much more reasonable threshold, i.e. zero, it's illegal to charge interest). which is not to say that concentration of capital and mitigation of risk aren't important elements to our system--just to point out that close scrutiny is the least of our communal obligations to economic justice and our own societal solvency. for banks to be "good", like the wolves we domesticated millennia ago, they must be carefully trained, and very often kept on a short leash.

yeah, dubya started it, but barry has done nothing to improve on the folly, and right now our incoming joint chief of staff (shouldn't that be chief of joint staff?) is enduring a certain amount of national security scrutiny over the importance of government solvency to our national defense. dempsey may like to believe we need to prioritize security independent of means, but history is chock full of stories of even absolutely powerful monarchs who were undone by the unrest unreasonable tax burden places on those otherwise sworn to fealty. if we'd like to remain secure in our beds, we ought not to ignore the implications.