Firn,

The market is harshly beautiful and in many ways it mirrors nature which is 'red in tooth and claw'; however, i suspect that there is a reason why our brains combine both 'mammalian and shark brains'....

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC (12 January [NS] 1729[1]– 9 July 1797) was an Irish[2][3] statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party.

He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution. The latter led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", in opposition to the pro–French Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox.[4]

Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in the 19th century. Since the 20th century, he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern Conservatism,[5][6] as well as a representative of classical liberalism.[7]
MF Global Reveals You Are a Bank Counter-Party, Author: Barry Ritholtz · February 15th, 2012, Economonitor

And therein lay the dirty little secret of modern banking: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SEGREGATED ACCOUNT. It is simply a helpful way to think about money and banking; it does not exist in the real world.

Consider your basic bank account — checking, savings, passbook, etc. We go through massive contortions to create an illusion that your money is yours, that its safe and sound in a bank with your name on it, in your own virtual safe deposit box. But that is simply not the reality of modern banking. What you perceive as “your money” is little more than an electronic journal on the banks accounting ledgers.

Fractional reserve banking means that the $100 you deposit is lent out — only $10 of your $100 is kept in reserve. Under normal circumstances, with thousands of depositors and millions of dollars, the banks have no trouble giving customers who ask for their money back the full amount at anytime. But it is not as if your money is sitting in an account waiting for you — you merely have a claim on those monies, and that claim is insured by the FDIC, and backed by taxpayers (theoretically).

You are, in fact, a counter-party to your bank.
The risks and rewards are to use a big word “asymmetric.” Hit a home run as a trader or banker, collect a huge bonus. Lose it all and then some, and the taxpayer is on the hook. Anyone who fails to see the simple math of this either spends their days shilling for banks or are acting as CEO mouthpieces.
Sarkozy Says France Will Impose Transaction Tax in August, by Helene Fouquet and Mark Deen - Jan 30, 2012 8:01 AM MT, Bloomberg news

France plans to unilaterally impose a 0.1 percent tax on financial transactions starting in August, President Nicolas Sarkozy said, brushing aside opposition from the nation’s banks.

“What we want to do is provoke a shock, to set an example,” Sarkozy said late yesterday on French television from Paris. “There’s no reason why deregulated finance, which brought us to the current situation, can’t participate in the restoration of our accounts.”

A France-only levy is opposed by the country’s financial community and its feasibility has been questioned by the Bank of France. It has become a political challenge for the president, who faces elections in a two-round vote in April and May and wants to make good on a pledge he made to impose such a tax when France last year held the presidency of both the G-8 and G-20 group of countries.
The tax will apply to share purchases, including high frequency trading, and CDS transactions. Unlike the European Commission proposal, it will not apply to bond trading.
Vickers report: banks get until 2019 to ringfence high street operations, Jill Treanor, Monday 12 September 2011 02.44 EDT, The Guardian

Britain's biggest banks are to be given until 2019 – longer than had been expected – to implement radical reform of their operations to prevent another taxpayer bailout of the system.

The Independent Commission on Banking – issuing its report almost three years to the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers which led to the major 2008 bank bailouts – said that banks should ringfence their high street banking businesses from their "casino" investment banking arms.

The much anticipated final report by Sir John Vickers admitted its proposed reforms would cost between £4bn and £7bn but were more practical and less expensive than the full-scale separation of the kind that business secretary Vince Cable had called for in opposition.

The ICB conceded that its reforms were "deliberately composed of moderate elements" but insisted "the reform package is far-reaching".
Sir John Vickers, bio by wikipedia

Sir John was educated at Eastbourne Grammar School and Oriel College, Oxford, culminating in his graduating with a DPhil from Oxford.
After a period working in the oil industry, he taught economics at Oxford University and was Drummond Professor of Political Economy from 1991 to 2008. His academic posts have also included the London Business School, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was President of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2003–2007, and of the Royal Economic Society, 2007–10.

From 1998–2000 he was Chief Economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee. From 2000–05 he was Director General/Chairman of the Office of Fair Trading. He was knighted in 2005.
Foreign critics should not worry about ‘my’ rule, By Paul Volcker, February 13, 2012 6:25 pm, Financial Times, www.ft.com

Let’s get serious.

National regulatory (and at least as important, accounting and auditing) authorities should, to the extent that it is practical, seek common understanding and common approaches. In the past, I participated in that process, helping to initiate the effort to achieve common capital standards for banks. I am today encouraged by efforts under way by the US, British and other authorities to reach the needed degree of consensus with respect to resolution authority – in plain English how practically to end the “too big to fail” syndrome. This is really complex. The major banks are international and managing their orderly merger or liquidation will necessarily involve co-operation among jurisdictions. That is a key challenge, arguably the most important one for banking reform. It needs to be dealt with.

Meanwhile, let us not be swayed by the smokescreen of lobbyists dedicated to protecting the interests of some highly compensated traders and their risk-prone banks.
Paul Volcker, bio by wikipedia

Paul Adolph Volcker, Jr.[1] (born September 5, 1927) is an American economist. He was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under United States Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan from August 1979 to August 1987. He is widely credited with ending the high levels of inflation seen in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s. He was the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama from February 2009[2] until January 2011.[3]