Iceland put top finance executives behind bars, but fears of cronyism remain
Exactly, the problem has got worse.<p>Banks are larger and more centralised, the offenders unpunished know they can act with impunity, legislation is unchanged.<p>Banking/ finance types now know that if they are losing money they must simply lose big enough to trigger more bailouts and the taxpayer pays.<p>This is despotic anti-capitalism: they keep the winnings and losses are generational debt on which they again profit.<p>The only ways that have ever worked to inject capital is to pay the poor and middle class by national infrastructure projects or GWBush style $1000 cheques - everyone benefits as money circulates.<p>Keynsian economics got this right.<p>Banks and the rich largely hoard capital where it is useless, pretending risk aversion when it was outright fraud that caused the econopocalypse, not risky but legitimate loans to business.<p>This will happen again unless investment and savings banks are again separated, but no nation wants to do it unilaterally fearing an exodus of non-dom capital they use to cook the government figures.<p>Finance is rotten to its core.<p>Quantative easing is bailouts by the backdoor.<p>Austerity stagnates an economy.