Comment & Debate
“Why Nationalization of the Banks is a Bad Idea”. Free Republic. February 20, 2009 – The first and most obvious is that fact that the government will have access to all our financial records. Now you may say that they do already and to some degree that is true but currently there are limits. If the government wants your records they need a good reason and to get them it usually involves law enforcement, a judge or the IRS. If the banks are nationalized government employees will have access to our financial records as a matter of course. There are two critical areas of privacy we once took for granted. One was doctor-patient confidentiality and the privacy of our medical records. That is disappearing under provisions found in the stimulus bill. The second is the privacy of our finances. The erosion of that sphere of privacy has been disappearing since the adoption of the income tax. Now any vestiges of our financial privacy will disappear. If our finances and records are under the control of the government, we lose a very important safeguard of our freedom. The day when our taxes are taken directly from our bank accounts cannot be far away. If we criticize the government, could we find our accounts frozen or subject to convenient bureaucratic error? The IRS has already been used thus, will the banks be next? Finally, think of this. For seventy years we have dutifully sent in payments to the government for our retirement, known as Social Security. Where is all that money? It is gone. If the government is in charge of our bank accounts, money markets and even investment accounts, do you think for a moment that replacing all our real assets with IOUs will not be a real temptation? History does not inspire confidence.