This is a Heist

Reports out yesterday make it clear that bankers are still operating freely as basically a feral class able to go about large-scale robbery unhindered. Whilst fines were imposed – five of the world’s largest banks have been fined a total of £2 billion after an investigation into the rigging of the foreign exchange market – and the Serious Fraud Office brought in – we’ve been here before and it’s 100% certain that this industrial scale bank looting will continue unabated.

Including HSBC and the tax-payer funded Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), the banks were found to have “failed to control business practices.” How tardy.

The Independent reports:

“In the latest scandal to rock the industry, a number of traders have been suspended or fired for misconduct involving the buying and selling of currencies. The latest fines are four times bigger than those imposed following the Libor rigging scandal.

Around £3 trillion is traded on the giant market every day – making it much bigger than the stock and bond markets – and about 40 per cent of those trades are thought to go through London.”

RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton said:

“Today is a stark reminder of the importance of culture and integrity in banking and we will rightly be judged on the strength of our response.”

It would be funny if they didn’t believe it.

While for most people this has just become normalised as the backdrop to political and business sleaze and corruption, one economic journalist just lost it in a refreshing explosion of human honesty against such wanton greed:

Comments (21)

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  1. “please don’t please make a criminal offence possible in the boardroom otherwise nobody talented will come and run these banks” NOBODY TALENTED IS RUNNING THEM!!!

    This also gives lie to the claim that you have to pay exorbitant salaries and even more exorbitant bonuses. It is well past time that these people were prosecuted and salaries cut to the national average. (thats £25,000 which is enough for them to live on)

    1. dasoulsby says:

      You don’t need talent to manage other peoples money! You need integrity, Honesty, and some degree Numerical accounting skill.
      These people use the word talent to mean, deceitful, duplicity, Dishonest, Self serving.

      Lets get our own Publicly owned,Scottish Community Savings Banks, started.
      One in every area serving the communities backed by peoples savings.
      I would also advocate a Scottish Business and Development Bank. Again publicly owned and tasked with developing the economy in Scotland.
      I would go further to say that the Business Bank would hold assets of land, art, water,etc as part of a social fund in public ownership for the nation.

      1. Luan says:

        Airdrie Savings Bank https://airdriesavingsbank.com/our-ethos/history/ no shareholders, an independent bank, in Scotland.

      2. Frank M says:

        Very sensible comments. This, of course, would be much be much easier in an Independent Scotland, where we would be in charge of our own affairs and accountable to ourselves for our own actions.

        It is so hard to understand the ‘better together’ campaign from ordinary people’s point of view, in the face of every day evidence to the contrary. How blind can you get? London does not learn, because it does not want to learn. Westminster politicians turn a blind eye, because it is in their interests to do so. They are at the centre of all this and everything is swept under a carpet.

  2. Optimistic Till I Die says:

    It is time people began to talk up the views expressed by James Robertson on http://www.jamesrobertson.com and force our politicians to serve the people who elected them. If there is ever going to be any control over the money supply and those who abuse the banking system then promoting the case made by James is one way to do so and force change that is in the interests of the population at large and not simply a self serving, blinkered elite who argue that they manage a system that produces great wealth, much of which trickles down to the masses.

    1. Frank M says:

      Should that be ‘much of which never trickles down to the masses’?

      1. Jenny Hickey says:

        …or “none of which trickles down to the masses.”!

      2. Optimist Till I Die says:

        It makes sense as originally stated – their argument, not mine. But I agree that relatively little trickles down nowadays given the widening gap between the ultra rich and the ordinary person working in a shop or factory.

  3. old highlander says:

    Trust bankers?? They are almost as despicable as some politicians.

    Bring on the revolution.

  4. wwilmawatts says:

    As far as I understand it the FINES paid by these banks go into the fund that they all pay into. Then ALL the the other banks pay less to their Financial Authority. They are not being punished they are having a laugh. What also gets my goat is if we as individuals try to move money we come up against the,” Oh, you can’t do that because of Money Laundering laws!” London is the Money Laundering centre of the financial world.

    1. Jenny Hickey says:

      YUP!

  5. First the PPI scam, then Libor and now Foreign Exchange Rates – This is truly disgusting and proves a systematic culture of deceit and skull duggery. Criminal charges MUST be brought against the banks and individuals. The traders are merely scapegoats, more internal regulations could be implemented to easily prevent this.

    The level of the fines don’t match the profits being made by the banks – for example the RBS made $620,000 in one day – so the £2 billion fine is nothing.

    I worked for the BOS and have also worked in Timeshare and I can testify to the fact that I was taught the most disgusting and immoral sales tactics when I worked for BOS. I was opening new accounts for small businesses and we were taught to say things to customers that were illegal, but because the FSA hadn’t monitored calls and warned against saying XY or Z then we were told by our bosses to keep saying it until we were caught – obviously I left the company went to Uni and educated myself on how businesses should be run.

    How can these bankers keep getting bonuses which have been earned illegally? – because they can

    I’m not the biggest fan of publicly run services (famous for being inefficient) but your idea of a community Scottish Bank is surely the way forward. The FSA or whatever they’re called now are utterly useless and powerless.

    Our country is still paying the price for the economic crash and bank bailouts and I fear it won’t be too long before another catastrophic crash happens again 🙁

    1. Gordon says:

      Agree, Jason King. Once upon a time Scottish financial institutions were regarded as standards of integrity and honesty. ‘Scottish’ before the name of a bank, life assurance company, general insurance company, pensions company was a guarantee of straight dealing and honesty. Many of these companies then started dealing in rip-off London and were infected with the greed virus, and are now no more trustworthy than the rest. The cachet of ‘Scottish’ in the financial world is now meaningless.
      The dealers and their bosses should be jailed for these practices. This so-called white collar crime is no different from embezzlement or picking pockets. It is theft.

      1. Theft it certainly is Gordon, but one or 2 traders will be made scapegoats and the systematic abuse of the Banking system will continue. Not a single party is willing to take on the banks, regulations and criminalising their actions. They’ve got too much clout and are King’s of Lobbying.

        In reality it’s really not that difficult for Banks to monitor the actions of their employees, but then there’d be no scapegoats 🙂

    2. P. Williams says:

      Bankers will continue to fiddle until such time that corrupt directors and CEO’s are led away in handcuffs and banged up for a few years.

    3. Gordon bradley says:

      ” publicly run services, famous for being inefficient ” ?
      You mean like the east coast line, just to take the most recent example of ideologically driven privatisation ?
      Define ” Efficient ”
      Run for the benefit of the people, or run for the private profit of the few ?

  6. David Soulsby says:

    This is all why we need to look for solutions ourselves.
    How can we advocate a monetary union with the city of London.

    PLEASE!!!!

    If we want to have a 21st Century Nation, then we must look to build a 21st century financial economy.
    Lets at least look our history to learn what we want and what we don’t.

    Do we want too big to fail banks?

    I would say NO!!!

    We need our own Community owned, Community Savings Banks.
    WE need to look at the new emerging forms of digital finance such as BitCoin, StartCoin, Etc.

    These digital currencies are a truly democratic revolution and a real alternative to the Bankster,
    fraud mongering, Big banks, their fiat currency and their money printing Ponzi scheme.

    The Isle of Man is forging ahead with a Digital Currency exchange! as is Cyprus.
    The latter after the blatant cash grab of customers funds by the banks.
    Ice Land, starting its own digital currency!

    They had the right idea from the start. They refused to bail out the Banks, Took the hit, Tried to jail the people who were responsible for the fraud and collapse of the countries economy.
    Guess where the fraudsters ran away to and are protected by?

    The City of London!!!

    We have a golden opportunity now to really look at what we want.
    What works and with whom we want to trust with the future finance and control of our economy.

    Neo-Liberal, TTIP. Corporates?
    Big Banks, The City of London, Bank of England/Federal Reserve?
    The European Central Bank, and the Euro?

    I Think this is called FASCISM!!

    A bit HARSH???

    OR TRUE SOVEREIGNTY in the hands of the people

    Lets have our own currency backed by our share of whats left of the Gold reserves. ( Thanks Gordon Brown) and develop the digital currency up take in our businesses.

    Come on Scotland be BRAVE be BOLD be the best we can be!

  7. david steel says:

    On a smaller note – GO PAUL MASON – the only MSM journalist with a shred of integrity left. A maverick during indyref and now rocking the boat over city regulation and bankers greed. well done.

  8. tammcgarvey says:

    And who ultimately picks up the tab for the fines? well it sure wont be the bankers. Lets start jailing them and the corruption will stop overnight. And lets remember the politicians who let them off the leash then bailed them out.

  9. David Soulsby says:

    This is what needs to happen. These corrupt Banksters are laughing at us all.
    Remember the Guy waving a wad of bank notes at the protesters out of the bank window in London.
    That just sums up their whole attitude to the people and their customers.

    We need to jail these THIEVS! Jail the bosses and directors of these Banks for negligence, for allowing this to go on. No excuses accepted!
    You are in charge! You are responsible! You go to jail for the fraud you and your employees perpetrate!

    Its simple,
    You are a criminal you go to jail.

    Why do we need to debate this?

  10. Douglas Robertson says:

    This is how students in Austria decided to show what the €19 billion needed to bail out one of their banks could be spent on – an entirely new city! So they planned and modelled it as a protest to this bank bail out. Given that the RBS bail out was even more spectacular we could have had three new cities. Now does that not help explain aesterity in a far more understandable manner – so perhaps we should do a similar exercise to explain the heist and corruption that characterises our banks

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