The government has decided in the wake of the Mid Staffs Hospital scandal that doctors, nurses and NHS managers should face up to 5 year in jail if they are found to have been willfully negligent of their patients. So why are bankers who are willfully negligent of their duties and responsibilities to businesses, individuals of the State not subject to similar penalties?

It may of course be argued that medical personnel work in a unique context in that matters of human life and death are involved. But bankers also have a uniquely dominant role within the current financialised capitalism in being responsible for the economic health or otherwise of whole communities and indeed of the state itself. Certainly doctors who have been extremely negligent in their duties or in mistreatment of patients deserve severe punishment, being struck off the medical register and in the worst cases given a custodial sentence. But bankers whose self-interest, greed or indifference to their wider community responsibilities have wrecked human lives, destroyed businesses and endangered the integrity of the State should be subject to no less severe penalties. They should be disqualified from ever working again in the finance sector and in the worst cases jailed for 5 or more years. Continue reading →