Lefties can be very conservative.

In the process of consulting with various people about this paper of mine (a revised version of which I am submitting to a economics journal) and which argues that the basic activity of banks is fraudulent, I’ve encountered several objections from those who claim to be left of centre.

Incidentally, I’m nowhere near the first to claim there is something very fundamentally rotten about the existing bank system: the Noble economist Maurice Allais claimed that banks, as currently set up, are essentially counterfeiters. That counterfeit accusation also meets with objects from lefties.

So what’s the explanation for that odd behaviour of lefties? Well I think it’s as follows.

As Edmund Burke rightly said, “Custom reconciles us everything.” For example had you or I been brought up in Ancient Rome, where watching lions eat Christians was regarded as a legitimate pass-time, then you and I would almost certainly have had no problems watching lions eat Christians.

But that’s an extremely uncomfortable reality to have to face: that is, most of us like to think our views are based on reason rather than on having been brainwashed by the conventional wisdom.

And in the case of banking, to admit that banks are counterfeiters or that basically they are fraudsters is to admit to having been conned for years by a bunch of fraudsters. And that's not comfortable.

One feels so much better if one denies the counterfeit and fraud claim, doesn’t one?

Of course objections to the idea that the existing bank system is basically fraudulent come more often from the political right. And doubtless those on the right are as reluctant to admit they’ve been had by fraudsters as those on the left.