You make some good points and I agree that to have innocent depositors lose their savings because someone like a Nick Leeson causes a bank to become insolvent is indeed ‘heartless and cruel’.
However, my basic point is that things should never have gotten this far. As I said, if people and institutions were made responsible (instead of governments printing more money or in other ways helping out especially the ‘big boys’ who ought to fail … all of which they could not do so easily if there were a gold standard) these things would be stopped much sooner, long before so many were hurt.
And I would think that, in order to protect depositors from incidents such as the Barings Bank failure, there could be some kind of national insurance against this sort of thing to which we would all contribute some small annual amount along with our taxes … or some scheme along those lines.
But Nature herself is heartless and cruel. Do you think that all the bailouts & QEs will save us in the end from such hard & cruel fates? I think that it only means that many more innocent people are going to suffer and do so for a much longer period than could have been the case. But that’s only my opinion. I appreciate your taking the trouble to put a different argument. Cheers, Tez
