Running against Goldman Sachs

Not long ago in the xxxxth version of "if voting actually changed anything, it would be illegal" Chris Hedges noted that it is actually impossible in USA to cast a ballot against Goldman Sachs on the national level.  In fact, it could be argued that Mr. "Hope and Change" Obama has more GS alums in his administration than any other in history.

So it is highly interesting to speculate on what might happen if a politician in a big economy actually decides to take on the banksters.  First of all, we can assume that such a pol will be wildly popular and will likely be elected.  But we can also assume that the threats by the banksters against such a pol will keep escalating to the point where the promised changes will be mostly cosmetic by the time that person is actually in office.  Yes, there have been politicians who have stood up to the banksters but outside of Latin America, I cannot think of an example.

So now we see that the Socialist candidate for prime minister of France has suggested the budgetary deficits can best be addressed by raising the taxes on the rich.  This is a LONG way from suggesting that the banksters be sent to jail or that compound interest might be be a hazard to the planet.  But to read the folks at the Guardian, François Hollande is a revolutionary getting his troops ready to storm the bankster Bastille and the folks at Le Figaro compare him to Saint-Just, Robespierre's Karl Rove.  A more rational assessment by the conservative opposition was provided by Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister who is running on the right against Sarkozy "The Socialist programme is not sustainable," he told reporters. "I would expect that within months it will be corrected by the very same markets that he has denounced."

As much as I love the French, I am afraid that de Villepin is probably right.  Rhetorically beating up on the banksters will probably get Hollande a landslide victory but the possibility of him actually changing much is damn slim.  The banksters have been running France for a long time now.  Her elite schools churn out folks well equipped to get senior jobs at places like IMF.  And Hollande is a LONG way from being either as intellectually innovative or courageous as Nestor Kirchner.  But we ARE talking about France here.  This is the country that invented dirigisme, after all.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves, but if European Socialism is ever to recover from being anything other than utterly useless, why not in France?

Simple Numbers of the Neo-Liberal Destruction of Greece

Naked Capitalism picked up a brief post by Australian blogger Delusional Economics:

What makes the situation completely surreal are the numbers. Greek debt in 2008 was approximately 260bn Euro. The first bailout was 110bn, the current one, that appears to be tearing the country apart, is 130bn. Add in the PSI+ haircut of approximately 100bn ( after sweetener deduction ) and you realized that Europe could have simply paid the entire bill in 2008 and saved itself 80bn Euro. Ok, that is an oversimplification of the problem but you can see my point.

However now, after 340bn Euros, Greece is still has an unmanageable debt, is in a far worse position than it was 3 years ago and it appears the country itself is coming apart at the seams.

So basically the Greek politicians and the other Eurocrats took a quarter of a billion euro problem and turned it into a existential trillion Euro one.

Greek Parliament Votes Austerity, Athens Explodes in Flames

A general strike in Greece ended this weekend, but it failed to sway the Greek parliamentarians from their appalling surrender to the "murder by spreadsheet" austerity ghouls of the EU, IMF, and World Bank. Widespread violence has reportedly begun. From Occupied London:

Sunday, Feb 12

• Athens, the long night of February 12: “burning and looting tonight”
  
• Photos from the demonstration in Athens tonight (ongoing)
  
• Syntagma live! Updates from Syntagma square, Athens Feb 12 2012
• A list of the buildings occupied by protesters, by the afternoon of Sunday 12 Feb 2012, ahead of the rallies in Greece
  
• Pre-emptive arrests ahead of the February 12 demonstration in Athens
• Athens and all major Greek cities build up for crucial demonstrations of
  

From The Guardian: "Martial law has to be imposed for these measures to be implemented"

Unlike two years ago, when the angry graffiti demanded that the "IMF go home" and "reject austerity" it now exhorts protesters to "murder bankers" and "rise in rebellion" and "never be slaves". The spirit of resistance shows no sign of abating. With support for the left, including the militant Communist party (KKE), growing by the day, opposition to any cost-cutting reforms is bound only to increase. "Martial law has to be imposed for these measures to be implemented," said Kyrtsos.

The European Tribune pointed to the above; and has an excellent summary of the economic ruin Greece has been thrust into by the banksters:

Two years of the most grinding austerity, has caused a destruction of the Greek economy that has no precedent, in peacetime, as official nominal wages dropped 15%, unemployment passed the 20% mark and, according to polling company VPRC, the bottom 90% of Greek households, suffered in 2011 alone loss of income on average ~45% of their incomes.

Calvinism vs Christianity

There are good reasons why the back row of a chess setup contains a bishop on either side of the king and queen.  It's been historically hard to exercise royal power without bringing religion into the mix.  The founding fathers tried to make USA a nation without kings, so queens and bishops had to go too.  Generally speaking, this plan has worked out pretty well.

But that hasn't stopped the would-be royal bishops from wanting to elbow their way into the back row.  Think about it—what in heaven's name takes four years to learn that makes that the standard time-frame for the education of a clergyman?  It wouldn't require a lot of effort to carefully read the Bible and other foundation books of Christianity about a dozen times in four years, so there are obviously other lessons needed to fill all that time.  The paramount lesson, of course, is how to make moral pronouncements that others actually believe.

Institutionally, what happened is that for much of recorded human history, the clergy made up the main element of the educated class in society and as such, became useful to the folks who would grab power.  And what made the clergy especially useful was the ability to translate the wishes of the powerful into the language of moral authority.

The MAIN reason the founding fathers decided to eliminate the possibility of a state religion was that most of them had come to the hard-won conclusion that democracy was literally impossible with religiously-trained people meddling in the public's business.  Ironically, stripped of it's legal and formal connection to the state, religion has flourished.

As the economic side of USA society becomes increasingly undemocratic and bizarrely unequal, however, the old usefulness of religion to protect the power-grabbers becomes more attractive.  So in the new USA chess set, the king and queen have been replaced by banksters and hedge-fund operators.  And protecting their corrupt ethical flanks are our old friends, the Calvinists.

It's a perfect match because John Calvin invented his upside-down version of Christianity so he could declare that the uber-greedy were actually God's pets.  To this day, I have no idea how this absurdity could ever be confused with Christianity, (see Matthew 19:21-24) but I have NO problem understanding why rich folks have funded Calvinist divines over the years.  Cheap investment, actually, because the Calvinist message that "Jesus wants you to be rich" has spilled over into virtually all faiths in USA to the point where Calvinism has become de facto the state religion.

YEAH! New York City building Second Avenue Subway

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a $261.9 million contract for the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway project in New York City. This contract

includes the installation of track, train signals, communications systems, and traction power between 105th Street and the existing subway station at 63rd Street. Additional project work includes modification of existing facilities and systems to ensure connectivity with the Second Avenue Subway system. The joint venture will also construct three rail crossovers along this route, allowing trains to switch tracks and therefore increasing line flexibility.

The Second Avenue Subway was first approved in 1929 - between the two World Wars. The line was based on a city-wide transit plan released in 1919. The First Great Depression led the City to postpone actual construction. A 1967 Transportation Bond Issue of $2.5 billion got construction going again, but NYC's fiscal crisis in the 1970s caused construction to cease again after three tunnel segments had been completed. New York voters passed another transportation bond issue in November 2005, and ceremonial groundbreaking for the Second Avenue Subway was conducted on April 12, 2007.

Saturday toons 11 FEBRUARY 12

"Go ahead, make my day!"  (Dirty Harry)

Walt Kowalski, Mitt Gekko, and Republican Jesus are all here to make your day brighter.

John Galt as a Producer?

Producers vs Predators is the class analysis that informs my book Elegant Technology.  Chapter One covers the history of this struggle, Chapter Three is devoted to class analysis, Chapter Four describes the cultural manifestations of the Producers, Chapter Six is devoted to Producer Class monetary theory, etc.  I HAVE covered this subject in depth and detail and nowhere can I find any example where a banker can be mistaken for a Producer.  In fact, if Predation has an archetype these days, it is most certainly the bankster.

What is especially ironic is that John Galt in Rand's Atlas Shrugged is an engineer—the highest status occupation of the Producers.  And the fictional Galt really IS a Producer (including negatives like the unfortunate tendency to make facile social and political judgements.)  But Producers do have a unifying complaint. From the humble truck driver to the most arrogant research scientist, they all agree with the sentiment that their work is far more difficult and important than they are given credit for, they hate idiots meddling in their jobs, and once in a while they just want to stop working to see if maybe THEN they will be properly appreciated. Rand calls this last sentiment "going Galt."

And of course it IS possible, even likely, that bankers are feeling a bit under-appreciated these days.  After all, most of them work pretty hard at whatever they do and even though only about .00001% of what they do has any social utility whatsoever, apparently this is enough to allow them to appropriate one more thing from the Producers—their main complaint!  From the perspective of those who must do the community's necessary work, this cultural theft borders on blasphemy.  As they see it, the trouble with banksters is that the harder they "work," the worse it is for the rest of us.  How can it be otherwise when 99.99999% of what they do, by volume, is nothing more than a slick version of larceny.

Would $7,500 extra for 100 million workers have any effect?

Why isn't this guy on Obama's advisory council for job creation? Progressive billionaire tells Yahoo Finance: "If it was true that the rich and business were the job creators, we'd be drowning in jobs today.... if you took corporate profits from the high that they are now and dropped them to a "normal" rate, you would cut loose about $750 billion. If you spread that $750 billion among 100,000,000 middle-income workers, that's $7,500 a worker. Imagine how robust our economy would be."

Nick Hanauer is a very rich, wildly successful business man. His company, aQuantive, was purchased by Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. He founded gear.com, which merged with Overstock.com, and he was one of the first investors in Amazon.com in the 1990s. Hanauer knows opportunity.

Hanauer also, it seems, both understands and is willing to articulate what most of our country's wealthiest citizens refuse to acknowledge: that it is the middle class which creates jobs through demand, and that our country's richest members of society need to be paying more in taxes so as not to undercut and destroy those Americans who ultimately determine our nation's economic health.

Hanauer was interviewed recently by Henry Blodget of Yahoo! Finance, and it is an interview I highly recommend be viewed in its entirety. (I've embedded it below.)
Read more.

Cold snap triggers a renewables milestone

Yesterday, while we had an almost spring-like day with a high of 45°F (7°C) here in Minnesota, Europe was staggering under a nasty cold snap with temperatures as low as -25°F (-32°C).  Obviously, someone else got our winter.  While the hardest hit was the Ukraine, many countries have been blasted as the jet stream wobbles eastward spilling Arctic air into places like Spain.

The most instructive problems happened in France.  France has a lot of poorly-built housing stock that relies on electric space heaters to ward off an occasional winter chill.  They are not equipped to handle real cold.  And here is where the story gets interesting.

(From a German version of Der Spiegel—Google machine translation—my grammar cleanup)

02/08/2012
Winter's Chill
The French need German electricity

German green power is helping France out of trouble. Despite the nuclear phaseout, German power plants are still producing more electricity than is consumed within the country—France is lucky, because her consumption is rising due to the record level cold, it is dependent on German support—which will be supplied with solar power.

Hamburg:  Germany has eight nuclear power plants, France produces most of its electricity in 59 reactors—and yet the French are dependent on German power assistance.  The reason: According to information provided by the power grid operator, by 7:00 pm on Tuesday evening, the consumption in France had climbed to more than 100 gigawatts.

This power consumption is the equivalent of more than 80 nuclear power plants and is currently almost twice as high as in Germany. In this country there are 15 million more people, yet Tuesday night  consumption was just 51 gigawatts. The main reason for this is that in France there are a lot of electric heaters.

Some of France has recently reported that is has to import more than 7,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity per hour to maintain supply.  At times German net export was more than 3000 MW per hour. 

Federal Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen (CDU) claimed the predictions of serious blackouts in the winter as a result of the energy transition had now been refuted. "The current days of bitter cold show that renewable energy contributes to security of supply and network stability."

It is interesting, said the federal environment minister, that Germany, especially in these days with a very high demand, can even export power—thanks to photovoltaic and wind energy. "We had in the last days a capacity of up to 10,000 megawatts of solar power, which corresponds to the output of ten nuclear power plants, and up to 11,000 megawatts of wind power," said Röttgen.

Energy experts warn, however, that the failure of multiple power plants because of high demand such as in France could lead to significant problems. "France with its nuclear-heavy electricity supply threatens European energy security," says the Green Party politician Hans-Josef Fell. more

I am not so sure I would be as cocky as Norbert Röttgen, but this really IS a milestone in renewable energy.  There is a LONG way to go before even the Germans can claim to be running on solar power, but in February of 2012, solar power bailed out nuclear power during a record cold snap.  And that folks, is an achievement to celebrate.

The Germans build another solar park.  This was assembled on an old military airfield.  Swords into plowshares indeed.

Making solar work

With the possible exception of wind sites in North Dakota, it is almost impossible to imagine any place on earth that has fewer residents to object to the building of solar infrastructure than a desert.  And yet, try building some large solar collectors in southern California and you get NIMBYs—even if they have to drive several hours to get to the neighborhood in question.

Hands down, the hardest part about the potential development for renewables is that there is hardly any place left on earth where there are so few people and so little existing infrastructure to displace that large-scale projects are hassle-free.  Just look at the headline for this article.

Sacrificing the desert to save the Earth
Environmentalists are torn over the high cost of breaking reliance on fossil fuels. Public comment has been sought, but insiders are calling the shots.
By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times

February 5, 2012

Reporting from Ivanpah Valley, Calif.— Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket.

Clustered nearby are hangar-sized assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will become six square miles of gleaming reflectors, sweeping from Interstate 15 to the Clark Mountains along California's eastern border.

BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar power project will soon be a humming city with 24-hour lighting, a wastewater processing facility and a gas-fired power plant. To make room, BrightSource has mowed down a swath of desert plants, displaced dozens of animal species and relocated scores of imperiled desert tortoises, a move that some experts say could kill up to a third of them.

Despite its behemoth footprint, the Ivanpah project has slipped easily into place, unencumbered by lasting legal opposition or public outcry from California's boisterous environmental community.

The public got its chance to comment at scores of open houses, but the real political horse trading took place in meetings involving solar developers, federal regulators and leaders of some of the nation's top environmental organizations.

Away from public scrutiny, they crafted a united front in favor of utility-scale solar development, often making difficult compromises.

"I have spent my entire career thinking of myself as an advocate on behalf of public lands and acting for their protection," said Johanna Wald, a veteran environmental attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I am now helping facilitate an activity on public lands that will have very significant environmental impacts. We are doing it because of the threat of climate change. It's not an accommodation; it's a change I had to make to respond to climate." more

Halftime in America (update)

Two days after the Super Bowl, we have feedback on the big Clint Eastwood ad.  Because it is such a classically done Producer Class piece, it has seriously confused the Leisure Class political commentators.  Many are calling it the first Obama ad of the next election.  Republicans are furious and wonder why Eastwood, a long-time Republican, agreed to do it.  Karl Rove was beside himself yesterday.

In 2008, Eastwood did a surprisingly thoughtful piece shot in Detroit called Gran Torino.  It is about an autoworker who is DEEP into the tool culture.  He can hardly fit his pristine Gran Torino into his garage for all the tools.  He despises his Hmong neighbors because the are not part of his tool culture.  Then he discovers the young man next door is more interested in his tools than any of his sons ever were.  Suddenly, race is pretty irrelevant.  See the movie.

Eastwood played his role as if he really understood it.  I am certain his Walt Kowalski will live long in Detroit lore.  So Eastwood was an obvious choice to do this year's big Chrysler ad.  But the confusion over this ad proves yet once again, the difference between Producers and Predators is MUCH more interesting than between Democrats and Republicans.

Obviously, an ad this good will generate tributes and spoofs.  Here's the first one I have seen.

The bliss of ignorance

The following clip from RT makes the point that the clowns running for president are doing grave harm to the country because they want to be the top officer in an empire they cannot describe.  I know this is hard for the American Exceptionalists to grasp, but turning your country into a series of crude jokes is not good for long-term international relations.  I know you folks don't actually CARE what those furriners think about our lack of international awareness, but remember, you are but 5% of the world's population so it actually matters.

And YES!  I AM embarrassed about the nearly universal geographical illiteracy of my fellow citizens.  Of course, I am willing to believe this is a feature, not a bug, of mass control.  If the only time they mention geography on the teevee is when some faction in government is ginning up a war somewhere for some reason, then it is good for the warmongers that the public is a blank slate on which to project their lies.  The crack that a non-American city is only mentioned if we are bombing them is unfortunately all too true.  There are exceptions—but outside of the PBS infatuation with costume dramas about the English upper classes and the "royals" and the goings-on in Palestine, I would be hard-pressed to think of any.  I mean, even the weather maps lose all detail in the terra incognita that is Mexico or Canada.

The ugly "secret" is that these same politicians are just as ignorant about history, economics, industrial competitiveness, energy policy, and host of other serious issues but our so-called "journalists" don't know enough about any of these subjects to even ask a decent question.  They wouldn't even ask about geography if they could, but the subject comes up as an attachment to questions about how willing are the candidates to murder perfect strangers in places like Afghanistan.

Bringing the MOTU down to earth

The following is from a long and fascinating article from the New York magazine speculating on what the Masters of the Universe (MOTU) are going to do now that they have become perhaps the single most hated group on the planet.  It is clear that they know they are in trouble but it is not at all clear they know how MUCH trouble.

Ideally, the useful functions of banking would be hived off and become like a regulated utility.  The rest of the casino would be left without taxpayer protections.  But this is a LAST option being considered because most of the banksters didn't go into banking to be socially useful OR work as a civil servant pulling down $250k a year.  Especially not the civil servant pay scale.

In the Bible's most famous discussion of rich guys, Jesus cuts off a bullshit artist who thinks he would make a good follower by telling him to sell his goods and give the money to the poor.  Suddenly, the would-be follower wasn't interested anymore.  Those of us who aren't rich tend to forget that the rich are rich precisely because money means more to them than anything else.

The money quote.

[Matthew 19:21] Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
[22] But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
[23] Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
[24] And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The New York on the diminished condition of the MOTUs.  This is less than 1/5 of the whole thing.

Halftime in America?

Kind of hard for a Producer type like me not to celebrate the Industrial Class virtues in the best of this year's Super Bowl commercials.  Not that I would actually want to own a Jeep, understand, but I sure do like their commercials. This one, narrated by Clint Eastwood, is about economic recovery through manufacturing excellence.

And I especially like the idea of our current economic disasters as "halftime."  It was one of the themes of Elegant Technology.  From Chapter Four, page 51.

Shutting down industry is not the solution. Whether people believe the industrial revolution was a good idea or not; it happened. With the industrial revolution came an enormous population rise. If industry is indiscriminately closed, the dense populations that are the result of industrialization are in great peril of their very survival.

A better way to view the industrial revolution is to see the current industrial class crises as the halfway point. If the world turns back to an early stage of industrialization, there will be a massive reduction in the human population. If the present confusion of industrialization and its values is not clarified, there will be also a massive mortality of humans.

The solution is clear, the world must build its way out of the current problems using an environmental blueprint. Industrial values must be environmentally purified. Hope stems from the realization that this value purification process, while still in its infancy, has already appeared in the sophisticated industrial economies of northern Europe.

Corporations are people . . .

Dear Mitt-wipe:

Corporations are people?

Well, so are governments.

And I get to vote on the people at the top of the government.

Got no such vote on the people at the top of corporations.

So, guess which I prefer? Corporations or government?

Here's a hint, Mitt-wipe: I think democracy is a really, really neat arrangement.

If this country actually elects a complete ass-wipe like Mitt Romney, who cannot make the intellectual, moral, and spiritual differentiation between a human being made in the Creator's image, and a effing corporation, then this country deserves the Biblical plagues and the full wrath of God.

And that concludes our Sunday service. Go in peace.

Worse than the Riksbank Prize?

As regular readers of this blog know, I am NOT a big fan of the "Nobel" Prize for Economics.  It wasn't in the original will, it is funded and awarded by the Swedish Central Bank (Riksbank), it has only been awarded since 1968, and the overwhelming majority of the winners have been economic crackpots.  In fact, Merton and Scholes, the winners of the 1997 prize, took their "Nobel"-approved theories and founded a hedge fund they laughingly named Long Term Capital Management.  When it crashed, it almost took down the global financial system with it.  In fact, were the Nobel Committee located in USA, I am certain that someone would have sued them for giving legitimacy and approval to crazy people.

The Peace Prize, on the other hand, is everything Alfred Nobel wanted of his prize.  It is, in many ways, the crown jewel.  But this legitimacy has not translated into serious winners.  In perhaps the only time in my life I will ever agree with George Will, our reaction to the announcement that Barack Obama had won the Peace Prize made us say almost in unison, "For WHAT?"

Now it turns out the Swedes are going to launch an official inquiry into what has gone wrong with the selection process for the Peace Prize.  One can only hope they will do the same for the economics prize—and soon.

Saturday toons 04 FEBRUARY 12

Lots of Komenfreude this week as a nest of fund-raising charlatans were outed.  It was remarkable to see an organization built on approved Leisure Class illusions destroy its "brand" in 48 hours.  Oh well, if you live by illusions, you die by them too.

Infrastructure in decline

The idea that USA infrastructure has deteriorated to the point of collapse is actually getting to be old news.  Because if you look at the problems closely enough, it becomes pretty obvious that even the parts of the infrastructure that are in pretty good shape are hopelessly mismatched to the conditions we face.

For example, USA has a vast road system that is designed to support the traffic of gasoline-powered cars.  In an era of post-Peak Oil decline, it should be obvious that most of these roads will need replacing with something that provides transportation but without the need for this ultra-premium fuel.

Even so, the infrastructure problems point to a bigger cultural issue—the lack of a maintenance ethic.  I don't even want to imagine how much it costs the economy because people do not know how to take care of their possessions—or will not do it because they cannot be bothered.

Anyway, the following article is especially well-written and has lots of charts to illustrate the death of the maintenance ethic.

Ripping off the kids

When I wrote Elegant Technology in the 1980s, it was already becoming clear just how lousy a future lay in store for young people in a society that was obviously trashing its real economy in the pursuit of some short-term speculative killing in finance.  But this message was lost on young people full of energy and optimism who in spite of overwhelming evidence, want to believe their lives will be fulfilling—soon.  Especially in USA.

Anyway, I argued that when the young got tired of living the futility of economic decline, they could always go to work solving the problem caused by the end of the age of petroleum and other resource limitations—and other mega-projects.  Folks weren't buying back then.  Now that it has become completely obvious to the young that they are screwed, will we see demands for full employment economics?

Here's what I wrote in 1987.  Not much has changed—except for the fact that someone who was 10 in 1987 is now 35.  This person is approaching middle age and has NO conception of the USA that once solved big problems.  This might be the ultimate tragedy for nothing cripples the ability to solve problems as effectively as not being able to see how it is done—and that it CAN be done.

Oh, the wisdom of the Fed

One of the "truths" that we all are expected to absorb in our youth is that the most important thing for an economy is that its central bank must be "independent."  Any suggestions or criticisms from any outsider, even if that person is the President or Prime Minister, is brushed aside as nearly illegal intrusions from the great unwashed.

Unfortunately, we now are getting a glimpse at the conversations that go on in the august chambers where Fed policy is hatched.  And quite honestly, I have heard better monetary discussions in church basements and small-town barber shops than what is being reported here.  Of course, what is their downside for getting it wrong?  Even so, this is pathetic!

Bankers NOT banksters

It pretty easy to become furious with the moneychangers these days.  The damage they are causing to the real economy is crippling.  Yet to hear guys like Jamie Dimon talk, they are performing a necessary social service.  And he has a point—even if we were to eliminate all the hopelessly corrupt banking institutions like IMF, we would soon discover that we needed something very much like them.

The problem isn't that banking is fundamentally necessary, its that for those necessary services it provides, it charges WAY too much.  So I am especially pleased that Michael Hudson has decided to answer the question—what would a good banking system look like.