The Centre for Policy Dialogue, arguably the country’s leading think-tank on issues related to the economy, has once again set the cat amongst the pigeons, this time asserting the country’s banks have been reduced to mere vehicles for ‘the financial oligarchy’ - a handful of large players exercising control, often discreetly, over a disproportionate number of banks and non-bank financial institutions. This gradual zeroing in on the oligarchs of the financial sector is really the logical evolution of CPD’s tracking of the Bangladesh economy over the years, in which an overarching theme has been the gradual yet certain, and consistent, slide into the embrace of crony capitalism. Today it is practically the only game in town.