The decision-making process of the future will be dominated by the organizations that provide the backbone of block generation. If they don't like a change in the code, they'll refuse to upgrade but will still keep 50%+ of the CPU power. A major dispute between bitcoin.org and the backbone would lead to a serious fork.
Which puts the banks and their massive dedicated server farms back in charge of our money
Not really.
A group can only corrupt bitcoin if they are in control of so much that they would never want to. If Bernanke had personal income of half US GDP do you think he'd be willing to debase?