Marx or not, bankers should be warned

Maybe Joseph A. Debono (February 6) is right in suspecting the Marx quotation to be fake. I did that, too, but decided to consult my student notes on economic theory: the spirit of the quote is indeed there, even if the translation into English is too liberal or even bad.

The lecturer intend to warn capitalists not to exaggerate their economic muscle. This was the 1950s, when the fear of communism was very real, especially in a global scenario exhibiting the "ugly face of capitalism", an expression then commonly used by writers and politicians. My notes even make reference to a song called Sixteen Tons which ended with

"I owe my soul to the company's store".

Rather than wasting time on whether Karl Marx did or did not write in this vein (he inspired it, though), it is much better to employ it as a warning to the so-called "bankers" who have managed to give the profession such a bad name, and invite the genuine ones (the majority) to regulate themselves seriously before harsher impositions from national and/or international authorities become imperative.