To be fair, if you are a weak medieval kingdom, militarily unable to fight off the vikings, the optimial strategy is some mix doing what it takes to stay alive

To be fair, if you are a weak medieval kingdom, militarily unable to fight off the vikings, the optimial strategy is some mix doing what it takes to stay alive while offering resistance where you can. Wessex paid Danegeld, but later won important victories. (But even later, England paid Danegeld before handed the whole country to Sweyn Forkbeard). In the case of banks, a big problem is agency; governments and banks are co-dependent, and can evolve into a conspirancy to extract wealth from the public by whatever combination of tricks works. Money is the main way in which modern humans collaborate to do useful work for each other. Governments and banks are both necessary for that system to function, and have co-evolved to rake off a (large!) fraction of that useful work in order to power their own operations. Neither side can afford to offend the other.