In most countries, the system worked.
It worked ? It worked for who ?
The fatcats got immediate handouts to prevent systemic collapse, which pissed a bunch of people off since the fatcats were mostly responsible for the crisis in the first place. But in almost all nations, including the US, the handouts stopped and the fatcats have mostly been required to repay them as loans.
In the UK the Govt.(we the taxpayer) bailed out RBS (amongst others) to the tune of £45billion. The Chancellor lately decided to sell the stake that the Govt. hold at a price less than what they (we) paid for it. It means a loss to the UK taxpayer of £13billion.
Meanwhile my brother in law is still sat on at least £25k negative equity:-
But it wasn't really this that I was referring to in my post. More, it was the central bank creating money out of thin air and placing it on the balance sheets of the commercial banks that I was referring to. The ECB is still pumping an extra $63 billion per month into Europe.
We are all aware of Japans history of QE (ongoing - only now with the added "bonus" of a NIRP) - and it looks like, as you say, China is heading down the same route.
Bitcoin means Governments will lose a large tranche of their nation states control over monetary policy, were it ever to be adopted wide scale. Where would that control go ? It strikes me that by default it would go (back) to the people who were previously carrying the can (carrying the can precisely because they had no control).
The commercial banks could do the fractional reserve once, but they wouldn't be able to do it twice if they got it wrong the first time round. That, to me, means that when the safety net is taken away there would be a very great incentive to conduct business in a professional, transparent and above board manner the first time around.