Osborne’s sacking of Martin Wheatley, head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says it all. His sin was that he was too tough on the banks. The banks are the most powerful section of the Establishment which runs Britain, and Osborne is one of their chattels who does their bidding when half of the Tories’ […]
Posts Tagged ‘Bankers’
Banks have taken over the State and got away with it
May 25th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Six global banks, two them British, have just been fined £5.6bn in what the FBI has called ‘massive scale’ criminality, yet no individual executive has been prosecuted and no bank has been deprived of its licence to practise which would have happened in any other sector given such monumental wrongdoing. Indeed State regulators have gone […]
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The City & Wall St are a hotbed of lawbreaking & regulation isn’t working
May 21st, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The implications of the latest survey of the City of London’s culture are stunning. The study by University of Notre Dame and a law firm revealed that nearly a fifth of respondents believed that “financial service personnel must sometimes engage in unethical or illegal activity to be successful in the current financial environment”. It found […]
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Can private banks ever be trusted, after fines of £61n?
May 3rd, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The size of the penalties imposed on the UK’s Big 4 banks for illegal misconduct since the crash in 2008-9 is stunning. It amounts to £42bn already levied up to 2014, plus a further £19bn for conduct and litigation charges this year and next. That £61bn total is a staggering figure, equal by one measure […]
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Big four banks (with 1,629 subsidiaries in tax havens) are rotten heart of UK economy
Mar 30th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The more that comes to light about the nefarious activities of the Big four banks, the more extraordinary it is that these banks (a) demand a return to business as usual (which of course caused the financial crash in the first place), (b) continue to fight back against any reforms of a dysfunctional finance sector, feeble […]
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HSBC chairman admits bank too big to manage, so shrink it till it can be managed
Mar 3rd, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Douglas Flint, the chairman of HSBC, put his finger on it when under scrutiny by the Treasury Select Committee last week: “I don’t feel that proximate to what was happening in the private bank (at Geneva)”. He felt ‘very ashamed’, but not enough to forfeit past bonus payments in response. He was finance director when […]
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Downing Street, bankers and tax dodgers close ranks over HSBC Swiss bank leaks
Feb 11th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The revelations of greed and cynical immorality, with the ex-clergyman Lord Green topping the bill, keep pouring out of this HSBC Swiss bank scandal, one of the biggest of the last few decades since this is probably only the tip of the iceberg on bank wrongdoing in this no-holds-barred era of crooked capitalism. The facts […]
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Banks’ culture is still fundamentally rotten
Dec 4th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.In a pre-election party political broadcast called the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor was at pains to tell us that his ‘long-term economic plan’, which he echoed 15 times like a demented obsessive perhaps to cover up that he doesn’t actually have one, was firmly on track. The economy had been saved from ruin and was […]
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The Osborne forked tongue is cranking up for the Autumn Statement
Nov 14th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The Chancellor’s response to the £1.1bn windfall handed to him by the fine on the banks is a classic in Osborne double-speak. We’re told the money will be “used for the wider public good”. He means tax cuts as an electoral bribe. He says “today we take action to clean up corruption by a few […]
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Why should rich posh crooks (aka bankers) get away with it?
Nov 14th, 2014 by Newsdesk.The banks: how am I here again? Standing outside RBS, Paul Mason asks why action is not taken against crooked bankers. They plead not to over-regulate them, not to imprison them or they won’t be able to recruit the talented people they need. Talented at what, you may ask. Ripping off their costomers? Certainly not […]
