These were all catastrophically wrong assumptions. In all post-communist countries, with no exception, one criminal association (the communist or socialist party) was simply replaced by another (often comprised of the very same people). Elections were used (more often, abused) simply to queue the looters, organized in political parties. The mass devastation of the state by everyone - the masses included - proceeded apace, financed by generous credits and grants from unsuspecting (or ostrich-like) multilaterals and donor conferences (recall Bosnia). If anything, materialism - the venal form of "capitalism" that erupted in the post communist planet - only exacerbated the moral and ethical degeneracy of everyone involved. Western governments, Western banks, Western businessmen and Western institutions were sucked into the maelstrom of money laundering, illicit trading, corruption, shoddiness and violence. To perpetuate their clout and prowess, the new rulers did everything they could to hinder the reform of their institutions and their restoration to functionality. In communist societies, banks were channels of political patronage through which money was transferred from the state to certain well-connected, enterprises. Bankers were low-level clerks, who handled a limited repertoire of forms in a prescribed set of ways. Communist societies had no commercial credits, consumer credits, payment instruments, capital markets, retail banking, investment banking, or merchant banking. The situation today, a decade after the demise of communism is not much improved. In most countries in transition, the domestic powers that be conspired to fend off foreign ownership of their antiquated and comically (or, rather, tragically) politicised "banks". The totally inept and incompetent management was not replaced, nor were new management techniques introduced. The state kept bailing out and re-capitalizing ailing banks. Political cronies and family relatives kept obtaining subsidized loans unavailable to the shrivelling private sector.