Strangely enough KP, bank nationalisation should have been the first response to the banking crisis in the US.
Strip back bad debt, recalibrate and get the bank working again and then reopen and lastly when that is restablized, reprivatise.
Did you get the last bit? Reprivatise.
That is not what they did was it? No! Afraid of anything which looks like 'socialism', (whereas in fact it is just cleaning up a mess properly), they propped up the bad debt with colossal injection of funds, and the bad debit is still to work its way out of the system. Meanwhile the average joe is having to pay for it all. QE is a consequence not a separate cause.
Hands-off government? Now THAT's an oxymoron and hardly a solution.
The issue, surely, is what is effective in which context. Even your gardening analogy does not hold true in all contexts. It depends on the soil. Clay soil does not allow water to penetrate, so plants need coaxing in their early start to life. You also have to put down something to break up the soil in the beginning or it will never work. I've also lived in a marginal semi arid area and gardened in it's sandy dry soil and you won't grow anything if you just plant and leave it. That area is highly productive BTW using irrigation methods. None of this is socialist, just commonsense.
Planning isn't such a bad idea, surely? Or should we leave it all to the glorious greedy unregulated market?
Context, context and more context.
There is always an element that thinks solutions are terribly easy, and what we have to do is shut down dissent and debate and considered thought.
Just bear in mind that throwing out the intellectuals and academics is what they did in the 3rd Reich, book burning was also a favourite activity. We all know how that ended.
