Greedy bankers

I am heartened by the hysteria that currently surrounds the demands that "we" (who?) somehow punish the Greedy Bankers who are popularly imagined to have occasioned the global financial crisis. (See what Google News throws up for the term "greedy bankers", it's a hoot.) I can't offhand think of anything that will drive the FTSE more rapidly to a properly sustainable support level than the reasonable fear of wealthy investors that some portion of their assets are about to be seized to propitiate the mob. Still, once the bulk of Britain's wealth has finished fleeing to numbered Swiss bank accounts we can have a look at what's left and start again from there.

Update: I really like this from Paul K on nationalising the banking system: "There currently is no banking system, if by that you mean a network of organizations lending to one another and to quality companies in a predictable way...Instead, there are a bunch of paralyzed deposit-hoarding institutions stuck in a game theory experiment that no-one understands or can exit."