Why are so many free market advocates suspicious of banks?

0:00Many of us, I think, tend to be, even though we're in favor of the free market or all-out adherence to the free market in general, tend to be suspicious of banks. And there's something about banks that seem to be a little non-kosher, so to speak. There's a good reason for this. The reason, basically, well, one reason is that even though I'm a libertarian and a free market person, I spend most of my time, it's not almost all of it, attacking the government in one aspect or another, and I think properly so. Sometimes we tend to forget there's also private crime. I mean, government is not the only criminal in the world, even though it's the major one. Government, of course, is the major robber, major murderer, major enslaver and so forth and so on. There's also private crime, which we shouldn't forget about in the overall picture. A private crime usually is intensified if the government helps it along.

0:49In other words, if the private criminals are in league with the government, they have a very deadly and powerful combination. This is essentially what's going on with much of banking.