The bankers' arrogance would kind of deserve a lesson: the Treasury

The presentation of the "benefits of socialism" in the version of American Bernie Sanders, who is campaigning to become the candidate of the Democratic Party in the presidential elections in the US, has somehow made it to the front page of the BURSA newspaper on Monday, in an article written by Teodor Fleşeru of Sibiu, which is causing me to become confused. How can a newspaper that does that call itself "BURSA" ("The Stock Exchange") and how did the editor-in-chief dare to defile the capitalist dedication of the publication that I own?

I am joking of course.

In reality, I am the one who made the illustration for the article, drawing a nightmarish beast, with the title "A monstrous market".

Perhaps the joke that I started off this article with is a bad one, but I think that some of our readers deserve this sarcasm, because there are some, (probably from the banking system) who, on the articles on the topic of CHF denominated loans and of the law of giving in payment, can't bear to see that we are also publishing the opinions of the banks' customers, and not just those of the bankers, so that they don't question the "ideology" that BURSA is promoting; they are accusing us of "populism", pure and simple, because we are not leashed by the banks, like the rest of the market is.

These readers' attitude is in line with the arrogant performance of the bankers and of the banks' spokespersons, in their communication with the public, refusing anything that would even resemble a dialogue.

I remember that, in mid-2015, a high-ranking lady employed by a major bank reminded the treatment that bankrupt debtors used to receive in ancient Rome: "Debtors would be killed and cut into the same number of pieces."

Of course holding any dialogue with any such debtor and publishing their opinions in BURSA is out of the question, unless you are a dirty populist.

A dirty populist rag like BURSA dared to invite "the banks' number one enemy", lawyer Gheorghe Piperea, to the Conferences organized concerning the banking system.

You know what the reaction of the banking system was?

The PR officials of the NBR told us that the Governor would not attend; the Romanian Banking Association has informed us that it has decided that no bank would send in any of its representatives (there have been some bankers with personality who have afforded to make the decision to participate).

Arrogance and cowardice.

The lack of confidence that they could withstand a controversy, when faced with a more informed audience.

Bankers are revealing an unexpected narrowness in their thinking, committing, beyond the management mistakes in their own businesses, surprising mistakes in their communication with the public, bordering on stupidity: they prefer confrontation and even conflict, over dialogue.

On the other hand, they advertise.

They are replacing dialogue with advertising.

It seems like stupidity.

You don't start arguing with the bulk of your customers.

Unless...

The conflict with your own customers (even if it's only with a fraction of them) only starts making sense in two cases:

- First case: You can't afford to assuage the conflict without going into bankruptcy; this option was recently suggested, by the imprudent communicator of a major bank, in a televised news report.

- Second case: In reality, the revenues from their customers are not their real business; the idea is not to be ignored, given the financing relations that the banks have with the government (with the help of the Central Bank).

In both cases, the banking system reveals its uselessness in the economic mechanism.

The conclusion becomes even more shocking, when rephrased like this: "The bankers' arrogance reveals that they are not absolutely needed".

That is kind of what Bernie Sanders says.

He doesn't want big banks anymore.

But he is just a little old man with a rather limited imagination, whose simplicity can be easily traced to its source: he thinks that he can reform social structure, redistributing resources from the banking-financial market, to the health and education, a regime that would receive the title of "socialism".

Our advantage is that we have lived in socialism and know that it is not what Sanders believes in and we also know that we don't want to live through it again.

But, personally, I have nothing against socialism, just like I have nothing with capitalism, feudalism or slavery.

In fact I have nothing against primitive society or communism.

All of these "isms" are on the shelves are of our history, one hand away, and to Bernie Sanders it appeared that we have run up against the limits of capitalism, so he has stretched his hand to the shelf and he has picked up "socialism".

In reality, the first four "isms" do not illustrate anything else than organizational stereotypes around the wealth inequality of the world, to keep society functional and dynamic in its development.

The presence or the absence of banks is not defining for any "ism".

You can have banks in a slavery system, just as you can very well not have them and it would still be slavery, if there are slaves and slave owners.

You can have feudalism with or without banks.

You can have capitalism.

Without banks?!

Of course.

Please check the 18th century of US history.

You will find a state, named Pennsylvania, which has functioned for half a century without commercial banks and without being a socialist.

But beyond the support provided by the historical example, we could imagine at any time how to work and develop without resorting to banking services.

After all, lending is not a service that defines the notion of "bank", it is the services of taking deposits and payment orders that do.

If we are going to worry about the integrity of the social structure, then we can look at lending as a source of instability, while the current crisis is identified as a "crisis over indebtedness".

As a result, the lending services deserves being separated from the defining functions of the bank and deserves a particular treatment, other than the "bail out", "bail-in" and "quantitative easing", which are socially dysfunctional (the aberration of "quantitative easing" - the issuing of new currency - is visible without glasses, because the additional issue of currency is simply the issuing of additional debt, meaning that, according to the major financiers pushing the buttons of the contemporary world, "quantitative easing" represents the arithmetical wizardry by which debt that is too high becomes smaller, by adding more debt).

Once lending (a service that amounts to "quantitative easing") has been made into a separate department, like it deserves, it remains to be seen whether bankers would remain as arrogant.

They might.

There is a law that requires us to do business through bank accounts.

There is another law that limits, to almost nothing, the money companies are allowed to keep as petty cash.

We are legally kept prisoners of the banking services and therefore the bankers can treat us "however they please", because we are not allowed to pull out of the system, even if the "bail-in" is threatening us with our capital being confiscated.

I have an idea.

It's kind of an improvised idea, I hadn't even thought about in the beginning of the article: why don't we keep the our companies' money with the Treasury of the State?!

Yes, I know that there are some impediments with the delay of the operations conducted through the Treasury, but that can be improved; you abandon the interest rate, but the Treasury is not threatened by the "bail-in".

At least you are certain that nobody is going to steal your money and the business does go on.

And isn't a little sacrifice worth it to teach bankers a lesson?

If for no other reason but for the fact that I have no idea whether Americans are going to elect Bernie Sanders as president, but on the other hand I know that ours is named Klaus Iohannis.