In the Euro zone, thanks to governments writing finance bills that favour banks harming everything else, and parliaments approving them, left  and right wing are converging on a lot of issues. They are carrying things to far, they are blinded by greed and they don't see the dangers.

Whereas how much of a net economic drain think tank workers represent depends entirely on how much policy makers believe the stupid shit they espouse.

Diversification of the economy is critical.  It is important to see long-term trends going on.  As it is now, the percentage of the GDP has been increasingly involving the financial sector.  This article has a graph in it that shows this trend:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/26/friends-don%E2%80%99t-let-friends-get-into-finance/ 

This is from the article:

An analysis of MIT’s graduate-employment data shows that the financial sector increased its hiring from 18 percent of its graduates in 2003 to 25 percent in 2006. So not only are the investment banks siphoning off hundreds of billions of dollars from our economy with financial gimmicks like CDOs; they are using our best engineering graduates to help them do it. This is the talent that our country has invested so much resource in producing.

When most sectors of the economy grow, new companies are created. The authors found, however, that the finance sector is not driving firm formation; it is cannibalizing entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy by offering wage and skill premiums to individuals who might otherwise have started companies. It is also causing far greater volatility among publicly traded firms and a reduction in the quality of businesses started.

End result is there is no free lunch.  When a sector of the economy diverts away from innovation, into games of playing with making money off financial instruments that have already been sold, and don't raise money for start ups, and also don't properly fund new ventures, or come up with new ventures to begin with, you will end up with the future growth being shortened, and you see a trend where the financial sector continues to consume more and more of GDP.

I agree. Banks are businesses, so it's normal they do their interest. But their business is offering a service to others, keeping, managing and safely transferring money, and doing this they help creating new richness. But when they start doing more and more just their own interest, even destroying the richness of others to increase theirs own, the system rots. It's totally normal that companies compete with each other, but it's not normal that a company compete with its clients and betray their trust. In the best hypothesis there's conflict of interest, in the worst it could border or even actually be crime.

Your arguement is that grad students who have huge student loans aren't becoming entrepenuers risking all of their money to start up companies.

Weren't you just complaining on your wall about people "Falling down and having almost no chance of recovery."

Failing a startup company (most do) while you have a huge amount student loan debts is one of the few ways it's possible to do that.

This is why I keep saying your arguements are contradictory, you keep saying we have these vast completey opposing problems where one can't exist if the other exists... when the reality is.... it's neither. 

While I agree that fresh graduates, unless they are natural born business geniuses, would better start working for someone else before trying on their own, I'm still persuaded that currently, more than in the past, the biggest merchant banks have a huge conflict of interest with the rest of the economy they are supposed to provide services to. But I can't just blame them, I blame most governments too, starting from my country's new prime minister, Mario Monti, that second their plans and play into their hands.

I don't see how bankers really fit into your countries problems.  Outside banks being stupid enough to lend your country money when it should of been forced to cut it's spending a decade ago.

Banks are going to do nothing but lose money in this Italy situation... and Italy will likely end up screwed either way... all thanks to the irresponsibility of the last Italian Prime Minister.

Italy's debt started growing without control with the centre-left wing governments during the '70s. The government under which the state's deficit grew the most had the current Prime Minister Mario Monti as one of the vice-ministers of the Balance (back then we hadn't a single Ministry of Economy, but three separate ones, Finance, Treasury and Balance), in three years the debt grew by more than 44%.

And the banks have a serious role, EU central bank doesn't lend directly to EU states like a true central bank, but through big private merchant banks, that obviously make the interest rate rise to get their profit. The conflict of interest is obvious, banks profit directly from speculation and indirectly thanks to increased interest rates on the money borrowed by the attacked states from BCE. Who devised that mechanism is either crazy or fool or a thug.

Either Italy banking works a LOT different then everywhere else... or your just mistaken with how governments get money lended to them.

Typically... and i'm pretty sure just... everywhere governments "borrow" money by issueing bonds.

Bond's are auctioned on, and therefore the interest is based on how credible your government is at paying it's debts back.

When Bond Yields go up like in the case... those who have already bought bonds (Like the banks) lose because they can't sell their bonds to other people without taking a loss.

Example.  Say I buy a 20 year $100 bond for $95.  That is a yield of 5%.  Now say bond yields shrink, to 3% tommorrow.   I can now sell my 100 bond for $97 to a private investor.

Made $3 and I didn't even have to wait 20 years.

Now if the yield rises to 10%.  I can only sell that bond for $90.  I'm going to lose money unless I hold on to it... and if the country is going to default.  Like Italy.  I'll be lucky to see $50!  (See Greece and the 50% haircuts.)

I very superficially know it, and since it entered the Euro Zone, Italy works like the other countries in it, nothing different. Before, it worked like any country in the world with a national central bank.

European Central Bank is currently criticized for not fully working like a central bank, like the Federal Reserve. It's also criticized for relying on American, instead of European, rating agencies, while the Federal Reserve relies on national, American rating agencies. It's criticized for lending the Euros it prints to banks at a low interest, but not directly to states at the same low interest. For having rules very abstract and far away from people's and enterprises' (except banks) needs. For following rules that are more suitable to French, German and Dutch economies and less to those of the other states (and not just Southern European ones, UK, Denmark and Sweden still refuse to enter the Eurozone, quite fearing it). For having played into speculators' hands, a thing that is held also against Mario Monti. And many other issues. BTW the experience of common people is that the strictness with which the Eurozone regulates official inflation doesn't match what happened in the real world, where with the sole exception of electronics and communications, prices skyrocketed after the adoption of the Euro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Central_Bank

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_sovereign_debt_crisis