The ECB [European Central Bank] does not want hyperinflation or a Great Depression. The alternative is the transfer of capital to PIIGS [countries with very high sovereign debts] on a long-term basis. The states will absorb the savings of the region.
Those who made the risky bets have diverted the risk to others: taxpayers or the general public who holds currency. The gains from the bets are private, and theirs to keep, but all the losses are distributed to the public via government bailouts or money-printing.
The first shifts the losses to the taxpayer, and the second shifts the losses to everyone holding the currency being devalued. Smith describes what has been done to voters by the bankers by way of the politicians. There is nothing new here. It goes back to Walter Bagehot's description of "moral hazard" in the mid-nineteenth century.
MORAL HAZARD, put another way, is the approach (lobbying, fuzzy accounting, etc.) of corporations to keep most of their profits when the getting is good, but "socialize" the losses when sales and asset prices go south.