Another Day – Another Load of Bankers

Friday 14th November

Does it now come as any surprise that the bankers have been at it again?  This time they have been caught out fiddling key exchange rates, and this after all the mis-selling and Libor rate scandals.  Can they ever be trusted?  Absolutely not.  The whole system is corrupt, the whole concept of the “free market” is flawed.  There is no free market.  I find it quite incredible that in this age of computers where every transaction is recorded that we still rely on word of mouth between bankers to set these rates.  And exactly who are these traders?  Millionaires who are paid ridiculous salaries and huge bonuses to fleece everyone, the authorities included.  And it is all down to Greed.  And that is largely down to Thatcher and the rotten complicity she introduced and that has prevailed through the Blair years too and right up to today, where nods and winks from Government give the green light that making easy money is good, oh and by the way, we must pay these guys a fortune or they might go to New York or Frankfurt and ply their corrupt trade elsewhere and the country will lose out.

Of course whenever someone is caught they are singled out as rogue traders and we are assured that the system is more robust than it has ever been and that these are historic allegations and will not happen in the future.  Well, I don’t believe them.  The whole Capitalist system is corrupt.  And it goes deeper than you might think.  I have sat a lunch where bottles of wine are being consumed that cost more than an average week’s wages while rich men bemoan the minimum wage as wrecking their industries.  How many individuals who have bought a second property for rent are declaring the profit on their tax returns?  Don’t be stupid, why would you do that?  And so we are all, or almost all of us to some degree, complicit in a corrupt system that rewards those with money at the eventual expense of the poor.  Over thirty years ago there were those calling for the wholesale nationalisation of the banks with no compensation.  Now no-one is even suggesting such a drastic measure, all we can hope for is a bit tighter regulation.  In other words, legalising Greed.