Sorry guys, I've been busy for a few days.  After reading all your replies, here are a few thoughts of mine, partially to clarify what I might have missed explaining clearly:

- The one thing I thought few people understand (even in this forum or among the super-educated or super-rich) is that the state needs the banks.  Most people who follow the news know that banks need the state (to prop them up with taxpayer money, to apply loose regulation, etc.) but the state needs the banks to prop up state-issued money and debt.  This is key.  Many people think that if the government would just take back the power and wealth from the banks, all would be fine.  The truth is that it doesn't want to, unless the public wakes up.

- I don't believe there's necessarily a conspiracy in the conventional sense.  This "conspiracy" runs on power and lack of public awareness, and not primarily on secrecy.  As one reply mentioned, at best it's a loosely connected group with diverse loyalties and opinions, too big for any conventional conspiracy.  But this doesn't mean that the most important elites can't coalesce (more or less) around a key issue from time to time.  Two things immediately come to mind to illustrate this:

    1. Before the collapse of 2008, no one of great importance from the political and financial world warned the public.

    2. For decades before 2008, people had been using money market funds as if they were as safe as bank deposits (most of which is backed by deposit insurance in the West.)  No one of importance warned that there is absolutely no legal or public guarantees for these funds, until the crisis broke and one fund couldn't pay out 100 cents on the dollar (whereupon the Fed declared unlimited support for these funds.)

- If we are to have any hope of fixing our system, we have to understand the basic shape of this (loose) alliance, and also understand that, as a democratic public, we are actually at the center of the problems, and also have a lot of power.