Is that not a contradiction in terms ?

Also, will the break-up of troubled banks create economies of scale ?

But when this experiment failed, as it was bound to, those who are supposed to represent OUR (the citizen’s) interests, instead jumped to the aid of the business/banking sector (the too big to fail crap), by giving them money to stay in business.

It was money that should have gone to help citizens stay afloat while the business sector was shaped by the “survival of the fittest” philosophy they touted so loudly in the 80’s and 90’s.

Instead they convinced (by way of money) our elected representatives that making sure THEY stayed in business was the only way for us poor folks to be properly served. As soon as they realized that we were focusing on paying down our own debts, we stopped getting any more “stimulus” checks.

By the logic displayed in the actions of our country over the past few years, it’s easy to see that our system REQUIRES that a percentage of the population go homeless, hungry,uneducated, and sick. Otherwise there is no opportunity for profit.

Even though the citizenry is too IMPORTANT to fail, our “representatives” did not serve our interests. They served their own interests and the interests of those who bring money their way.

Only one president ago we spent money hand over fist to kill people in other countries because we SUSPECTED they intended to do us harm. We fought so hard for this that even when we realized the truth we still went ahead and spent that money up, and spilled the blood of our children, at the expense of our own people here at home.

But now we have issues of health care, education, and housing. Now all of a sudden cost is a factor. How absurd is this? If we were willing to spend money we didn’t have in order to kill, then surely we can make some economic adjustments in order to ensure access to health care and quality of life.

This is not a technical issue (who’s going to pay, how are we going to do it etc..).

It’s simply an ethical one. We’ve already made the choice to spend money we didn’t have in order to kill.

So, should we make the effort to ensure a better quality of life for our citizens here at home or not?

Congress can’t or won’t do anything about it now, because the banks own Congress and most of the politicians and bureaucrats in our government.

This problem certainly focuses attention on one important difference between the U.S. Congress and the U.K. Parliament. Our Congress is controlled and operated by the lobbyists who are employed by the wealthy corporations (and a few other wealthy entities such as labor unions). The majority of the members of Congress do the lobbyists’ bidding, since that’s who is paying them the most.

The U.K. Parliament is not controlled by the influence of lobbyists, so are able to thrash out their honest differences of opinion and work out a solution instead of just making it worse the way the U.S. does.

The approach of the US doesn’t surprise me. The old adage that they have “the best government that money can buy” appears to be as true as ever. The big corporations effectively run the country (US) for their own benefit. Seems to be true for banking, healthcare/pharmaceuticals, farming, oil & probably most of the rest of their industries.

What baffles me is why the Conservative party would want a closer relationship with the US!

We’ve had 12 months of merging the smaller institutions that had financial difficulties into more stable (apparently) larger institutions.

Now, less than 12 months on, these (much) larger institutions are deemed too big to fail so the proposal is to break them up into smaller institutions.

Welcome to the merry-go-round of UK financial policy!

US will never breakup its major banks; indeed the bigger the better. Which has already happened because the majors are now hugely bigger after absorbing a few of the Old 5 investment banks.

They are now beyond TBTF, they’re Too Big To Control. Indeed, Too Big To Touch. Why?

Because these banks are more than banks. They are instrument of US imperial power. They finance the trillion-dollar military to project power globally; they finance the unlimited spending appetite of Congress; they finance the agenda of every president’s claim to transform the world to America’s image and liking. And they finance the wars – which come regularly every few years.

But there is one more big reason no politician dared to touch the major banks who run their political lives. The US dollar is threatened and they need to banks’ power to fix it.

In other words, the politicians need money, trillions upon trillions, and only the banks can create the kind of unlimited money they are addicted to. They might as well hand the US Constitution over Goldman Sachs CEO and let him rewrite it. And put the SEC back into a box while at it.

If there is no accountability for banks, there certainly doesn’t seem to be any accountability for columnists.