radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (12/31/85)
> In article <894@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes: > >Nationalizing the banks would be a disaster! Instead of being independent > >power sources, they would all be added to what is already the greatest > >accumulation of power in the world. Now if you need to borrow money, > >there is only one place to go -- and you had better have good political > >connections if you expect any success. > > Until the recent advent of the Fair Credit Act (or whatever its called), > the same was true of commercial banks. Especially if you were poor, or black, > or <random object of bigotry or hatred>. I'd much rather that the banks be in > the control of the government, which I have *SOME* chance of affecting, rather > than private individuals. Huh? You really think you have a significant chance of affecting government policy as one of millions of citizens? You've been listening to too much "good citizen" bullshit about how "every vote counts". If banks are privately owned, some may indeed discriminate for various reasons. If banks are publicly owned, they may also. You advocate their doing so below. The difference is, there's only one of them. > Government ownership of the banks could be like that in France, where they > are run as semi-autonomous "for profit" institutions. Government ownership > insures, however, that capital is available for societally important > sectors, such as farmers and the poor. Right now, the banks are in > the midst of a massive series of farm foreclosures across the > country. These foreclosures do nothing postive, help to futher destroy > the small farmer and rural culture, and could/should be prevented, > given a government bank with the foresight to realize this. Private > banks can't see past this years bottom line. That way lies huge economic inefficiencies, as everyone invests not on the basis of the risk vs. the benfit, but on the basis of whether they have the political clout to get the government to bail them out if things go wrong. Of course, the government can screw this up without actually owning anything. Here in Canada the government has spent nearly a billion dollars bailing out uninsured large depositors of two failed banks, for no discernable reason other than keeping investors who should have known better happy with them. > Larry Kolodney (INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa