Can I just check what proportion of the US and British banking systems are currently nationalised?
Of course you can .....please, go ahead.
You also seem to be ignoring the fact that there is another possibility apart from deregulation and nationalisation.
Not at all, I am fully aware that there are of course other options. After all, under Old Labour strict regulation was applied to a private banking sector. That arrangement however, was firmly rejected Thatcher and a substantial minority of the British electorate.
Of course under New Labour we now have an interesting new arrangement - massive government intervention without any democratic control, ie, privatised banking profits, and nationalised banking losses.
An arrangement which incidentally, the neo-conservative Bush administration found particularly attractive. Which is surprising. Because if you passionately believe that the only way to achieve economic stability and prosperity is through deregulated free markets (and the neo-cons certainly argued the case) then the obvious solution when faced with an economic crises, would be further deregulation and to ride out the storm by allowing the 'free market' to run it's course without any government interference.
The obscene haste in which the New Conservatives abandoned everything which they had been arguing in favour of for the last thirty years, and the speed in which they were prepared to embrace the socialist solution of government intervention, betrays the fact that they never actually believed in their own rhetoric - despite the fact that they were able to so effectively fool Sun readers.
They were of course right. The banking sector is far too important to be left to the mercy of the free market. It is for that very precise reason that it should be removed from the whimsical fancies of the 'free market' (and it has) and brought under democratic control so that it can serve the best interests of the nation. And why Michael Foot was right.
