Nevertheless, banking is an interesting industry. It has been gaining fairy-tale profits from wars right from inception on any level. The compound interest math was destabilizing civilizations from Babylon and earlier. (See the most recent audio "History of Debt and Credit" and articles on debt on this website.)    

The information that is circulating now wider is on the US banking system. You know that the US Federal Reserve is not a federal institution but a private bank, right? See Chapter 3 of the Zeitgeist movie, and Aaron Russo's film, for some shocking brain washing.

Your points are most logical, of course. I see two sources for possible determination towards totalitarian control. One source is "tradition": the model exists conceptually and in historical practice. There might be no other just as determined model for the elites to sustain their position. The model has many functional and well developed parts; by keeping the public busy with entertainment, wealth race and/or survival competition, many people can be "masterly" involved into the system without their full realization. The core "conspirators" could be just a few key shareholders of largest financial, war building and media corporations.

The second source is (in my opinion) a kind of primitive Darwinist understanding. I do imply here some fatal influence of Darwin's (and Marx's and Smith's) ideas... The existential question is: what a super-wealthy, super-influential person to do? Darwin appears to give an answer: protect and magnify your competitive advantage; use all the power you have, and use it for yourself, and do it aggressively. Smith kind of concurs, while Marx gives a scare that your wealth could be taken away. Probably, we do not appreciate enough how primacy of self-interest is re-ingrained into the 6 billion logic braincenters, regardless of how self-interest is really realized in the emotional-instinctive braincenters and the nature. Our perception of self-interest rationality may seem to be necessarily universal, but I dare to suspect that it has different quality since the 19th century. I am working on, let's call it ambitious, project here... What I can say now, is that emphatic protection and magnification of competitive advantages does not appear to be a norm in nature; neither is conspicuous control of resources, nor tragedy of commons situations.  Stretching up your own food chain is a bad idea. Competitive advantage is taken far too seriously. The "Monopoly"/"Cash Flow" set-up of modern economies and politics will not end happily neither for loosers nor the few "winners". The self-interest as we commonly see it should turn out to be a big delusion...