Public anger grows at banking scandal
EVEN the Banks have bunting out on the Grantown High Street as we celebrate the Jubilee, Olympics and life in general this summer.
A notice appears on one bank, however, that apologises for the fact that some customers may have had trouble actually withdrawing their own hard earned cash from the hole in the wall.
The banking giant’s computer breakdown not only caused people to lose houses they were trying to buy but actually left one poor chap in prison as his bail money failed to clear.
This was, of course, scandalous but only one in a long line of scandals.
The latest involving Barclays and others fixing interest rates to make millions and pretend they were doing better than they really were is easily the worst.
The only words for this is institutionalised corruption and had an effect not just on how much we pay in interest rates but how well the world economy performed.
To be honest though this sort of behaviour has been going on for years.
One of my first jobs was as a trainee foreign exchange broker in the City of London. In reality all this was like working in a giant casino.
Here bankers gambled millions of pounds of your money on a daily basis. Needless to say I wasn’t very good at it and six months later I was on the dole looking for a proper job.
Now if you and I were to fiddle a few quid on dole benefits we would be hounded by the media and could face potential prison.
What do the greedy bankers get? Bigger bonuses and million pound pension pots.
And what do the Tory led government do? Set up an inquiry into how the LIBOR interest rates are set and a parliamentary enquiry chaired by a Tory MP on the banks in general.
As Alastair Darling, former Chancellor said: "The public may not like bankers but they don’t care much for politicians either."
The Tories clearly want to let their banker pals off the hook. The British Bankers Association which is supposed to regulate this is run by ex Tory MP Angela Knight yet she denies all responsibility.
The millionaire Chancellor George Osborne has the nerve to blame all this on the last Labour Government for not regulating the banks enough.
Okay they should have done more but cast your mind back to the last Tory Government when regulation was virtually non existent. Under the Tories we had the collapse of BCCI and Bearings banks. In the latter case Nick Leesing lost the bank $1.3 billion.
I was in the Treasury when Gordon Brown told the Governor of the Bank of England Eddy George, who was supposed to regulate the banks, that the old boys network of regulation was to end and the Financial Services Authority to be set up.
His reaction was to threaten resignation. He didn’t, of course, because he wanted to be the first governor of the newly independent Bank of England.
His real concern was that the news should not report the new regulator as being set up because the Bank had failed to do its job.
"Charlie wouldn’t spin that line," Gordon told Eddy. Certainly not but somehow that’s exactly how the news reported it!
The Tories have now given bank regulation back to their chums and are resisting calls for a proper full enquiry into the banks.
Even worse than that Cameron is diverted by the Tories obsession with Europe. This time he is promising that there might be a referendum on Europe sometime in the future.
He must think we are complete idiots. Who can forget his "cast iron guarantee" of a referendum in The Sun newspaper just before the last election?
They may have fallen for this ruse and backed him once but I doubt even they will be fooled again.
The Tories and their Liberal supporters had better wake up to the anger of the British people over the Banks behaviour because if they don’t the voters will turf them out at the next election.
