Is this arguing both for and against the need for financial privacy at the same time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands
No. Like all things connected to real power, the subtext is that the sovereign alone can setup "privacy-focused" banking for 'special' interests. Anyone else who attempts it is a rebel and may be drawn and quartered. Long live the lizard queen.
With public ledgers like Bitcoin, everybody can reconstruct your financial history if they know your wallet address.
With privacy-focused blockchains, nobody can do that.
However, with a bank, your financial history is not publicly available but the bank still can perform checks to guard against money laundering.
There are several different levels of privacy [1]. Some hide amounts and wallet addresses, while still exposing the transaction graph.
No.
It's a perfectly reasonable position to take. I want my transactions to be private to the world but it's reasonable that law enforcement has a method to investigate criminal behavior.
If law enforcement has a method to investigate your behavior, its not private. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Either you enjoy privacy (and so do criminals) or criminals do not (and neither do you).
That doesn't seem to reflect how the world has worked up until now.
There are plenty of things that are private except with a legal warrant. There's an entire legal history of wiretap laws and circumstances under which law enforcement can open mail I'd invite you to look at.