Interesting subject. I just this morning listened to a podcast which sorta relates to this, but from a different angle. But I think it is worth the listen as different perspectives always add to the material. I'm not sure I know how to imbed the link, so I'll just lay it out and you can cut and paste: Relationships.

It's from The Conversations Network which is a wonderful repository of all kinds of cool cutting edge talks, seminars, interviews and such, mostly in the I.T. world, but not all. This is an interview with Bob Blakley: "He covers identity, privacy, security, authentication, and risk management."

This is a discussion from a techie security guy's point of view of the interelatedness of identities and relationships. He posits that you can't have (be a repository for) identity information without having a relationship with that someone. In fact, many people have found that they had a relationship with others only after having lost or revealed that person's identity information, then having to attempt to make that person whole again. And likewise, you can't have a relationship without identity information. This really does tie together for me with the whole banking thing. The financial wizards seemed to think they could separate the money and the income from the relationship with the borrowers. And now they are finding out the truth of the situation (as you pointed out.)

- NonE

[Edited by Sunni to make link clickable.]