<story><title>Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>calhoun137</author><text>I love that we get these political discussions on hacker news, but I sometimes wish we as a community would spend as much time thinking about politics as we do thinking about programming and science.&lt;p&gt;Big banks function very much as part of the government, in many ways the big banks determine government policy, certainly to a much greater extent than popular opinion does.  There are many forms of this public-private merging of government.  To take just one aspect, consider the revolving door whereby bank executives go between their banks and government jobs and back again: to just pick one example virtually at random, obamas chief of staff is a &quot;former&quot; citi group executive.  I wonder, if a bank executive goes to washington for a little while, do they even notice that they changed jobs?&lt;p&gt;This article explains that the big banks wouldn&apos;t even be profitable without massive tax payer support, here is a choice quote from the article which really drives home how intense the stranglehold banks have over government policy:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Neither bank executives nor shareholders have much incentive to change the situation. On the contrary, the financial industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on campaign donations and lobbying, much of which is aimed at maintaining the subsidy. The result is a bloated financial sector and recurring credit gluts.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Some people wonder what could be done about such a situation.  The sad truth is that there are already an overwhelming number of ideas that are floating around that have already been demonstrated to work (see iceland).  The problem is not coming up with a good idea, the problem is how to implement one of the many good ideas which have already been proven to work.&lt;p&gt;The crux of the matter is that only the power of a strong federal government can take on the even more powerful too big too fail banks.  The only way political change happens is when people get organized, and the american political system gives us a lot of freedoms.  If you live and a free country and abstain from participating in politics, then in my opinion you have abdicated your responsibility as a citizen.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davidw</author><text>&amp;#62;  I love that we get these political discussions on hacker news, but I sometimes wish we as a community would spend as much time thinking about politics as we do thinking about programming and science.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t love it, because they retread the same arguments over and over, generate flame wars, and attract people who are more interested in politics than the niche arguments that are the bread and butter of this site.&lt;p&gt;Also, many of us &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; spend a lot of time thinking about politics, it&apos;s just that we don&apos;t feel the need to pollute HN with it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>calhoun137</author><text>I love that we get these political discussions on hacker news, but I sometimes wish we as a community would spend as much time thinking about politics as we do thinking about programming and science.&lt;p&gt;Big banks function very much as part of the government, in many ways the big banks determine government policy, certainly to a much greater extent than popular opinion does.  There are many forms of this public-private merging of government.  To take just one aspect, consider the revolving door whereby bank executives go between their banks and government jobs and back again: to just pick one example virtually at random, obamas chief of staff is a &quot;former&quot; citi group executive.  I wonder, if a bank executive goes to washington for a little while, do they even notice that they changed jobs?&lt;p&gt;This article explains that the big banks wouldn&apos;t even be profitable without massive tax payer support, here is a choice quote from the article which really drives home how intense the stranglehold banks have over government policy:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Neither bank executives nor shareholders have much incentive to change the situation. On the contrary, the financial industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on campaign donations and lobbying, much of which is aimed at maintaining the subsidy. The result is a bloated financial sector and recurring credit gluts.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Some people wonder what could be done about such a situation.  The sad truth is that there are already an overwhelming number of ideas that are floating around that have already been demonstrated to work (see iceland).  The problem is not coming up with a good idea, the problem is how to implement one of the many good ideas which have already been proven to work.&lt;p&gt;The crux of the matter is that only the power of a strong federal government can take on the even more powerful too big too fail banks.  The only way political change happens is when people get organized, and the american political system gives us a lot of freedoms.  If you live and a free country and abstain from participating in politics, then in my opinion you have abdicated your responsibility as a citizen.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gadders</author><text>So Banks lobby the government to get special favours and subsidies, and your response to this is to have more government?&lt;p&gt;How about have less government, no corporate lobbying and no corporatism?</text></comment>