Sandy Weill’s name may not be a household word, but it should be. If you want to blame just one man for the banks eating us all alive, he would be the one. As head of Citi-Group (or rather the bank that would become Citi-Group) he pushed through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that had kept the banks in check for 2/3 of the 20th century.
He and others of his ilk were able to sell the idea (or more accurately buy the belief from politicians, the media and so-called experts) that modern bankers knew what they were doing. After all there hadn’t been a banking collapse since the end of the Republican Hoover administration in 1933.
Once the merger of deposit banking, investment banking and insurance were merged, all bets were off, (or rather they were on, big time). Investment banking includes all manner of risky trading in derivatives, the sale of dodgy investment schemes, proprietary stock trading operations, and on and on.
These mega banks use market churning to run prices up and down, making money both ways. They drive up food prices by tying up supplies anytime there is anything like a shortage. In the developed countries we pay more for food when we don’t need to. In the countries where most people pay half their income for food, people starve.