Should the government nationalize all banks?

Wäre die Verstaatlichung der Banken der beste Weg aus der Krise, oder würde damit Lobbyistentum und Inkompetenz Vorschub geleistet? Talitha Linehan traf auf zwei gegenteilige Meinungen.

YES!

Dr Rupert Read is a Green Party city councillor in Norwich, England, and the leading Green Party candidate for the Eastern Region in the 2009 EU parliamentary elections. Here, he is expressing his personal views and not those of the party.

Rupert Read, Green Party city councillor

Banks have siphoned away huge amounts from the real economy, and left us with the moral hazard. The amount we’re investing in them requires that we own them, as a matter of justice. Banks need to be forced to lend, for the sake of the public. That’ll be easy if they’re our banks, rather than private “casinos”.

The neo-liberal experiment in finance deregulation has failed completely. We cannot depend upon a “liberalized” financial system to deliver a stable environment. As a Green Party representative, I am 100 per cent in favour of protecting successful businesses in every part of Europe. If we’re to protect private business now, then we need publicly controlled finance.

Some say that any nationalization should be only temporary. But that would allow commercial banks to start the same behaviour again in good times — to speculate and profiteer and so start fresh crises. And when those crises come, banks will once again refuse to make available the credit upon which businesses depend. We need systemic reform of the financial system to stop crises like this from happening in the first place.

Stricter regulations alone will not work forever, because a privatized banking system will always find ways around the regulations. It will always take more risks with the public good than real-economy businesses would.

Banking isn’t an industry; it should be there to serve the needs of real industries. We need a banking system consisting of a large public sector, democratically directed toward an economy that supports businesses in the real economy. And that means with low interest rates and plenty of co-ops, mutuals and credit unions, so that we have variety in the banking system and “competition” with the state-owned banks. That would be a banking system fit for 21st-century business.