2014 October 27 « Dr Alf's Blog

Dr Alf poses interesting and entertaining questions. Let me restate them for convenience:

Following the financial crisis of 2008, how many dodgy bankers have ended up in jail?
Also why have the big banks not been broken up to increase competition?
Surely, it would have been prudent to reintroduce the Glass Stiegel Act in the US, separating retail and investment banking?

Lehman Brothers Rockefeller centre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1) The answer to his first question is hardly any in the UK.

The US does jail bankers and dodgy securities and share salespeople like the rehabilitated “Wolf of Wall Street”(Jordan Belfort) but even there the men who gave them their instructions still walk free.

One HSBC banker implicated in New York for permitting Mexican drug barons to launder their proceeds through his bank (teller windows in HSBC branches were widened so as to be better able to accept holdalls containing drug dealing cash) is actually working for the UK Government. This no doubt on the basis that he knew nothing about what was going on and despite the $1.5 billion USD fine imposed on that bank by the US courts.

2) Because by keeping them bigger, future opportunities to plunder bank depositors using “haircutting” and other as yet to be tried techniques are preserved for future use on the basis that these banks are “too big to fail”.

The so called “Crises” were nothing of the kind but were deliberately engineered collapses designed to fleece ordinary people and further enrich those in ultimate control.

They succeeded brilliantly and the real culprits escaped scott free with vastly enhanced untraceable wealth.
Breaking up banks into smaller units makes them easier to police so it will not happen.

3) Glass Steagall will not happen for the same reason

As to growing inequality, SPIEGEL ONLINE will have more of it to write about long into the future as things are set to get much worse.

This not least because AI, robotics, automation, .cybernetics, voice recognition and 3D printing will eliminate swathes of jobs and directors of those businesses will for the time being pocket the extra profits by paying themselves even more than they do now.

John Gelmini





#464608459 / gettyimages.com

Dr Alf makes good points.

Britain is not a “toxic brand” as Jonathan Freedland puts it but the UK, under the present Prime Minister, is seen more and more for what it is, a small middle ranking power, on the edge of Europe, living in the past, wallowing in past glories and pretending to be important.

David Cameron has insulted the Chinese five times and cost the country billions in trade and contracts that have gone to other countries that very sensibly have chosen to speak in private and keep their relationships with the Chinese businesslike.

He says he is going to “look into” or “renegotiate ” things, when he has no legal power to do so on the basis of treaties to which he has signed-up.

When he does try to renegotiate he loses, comes away with nothing and then claims great negotiating success.

He now claims that his “boss” is the British people, when in fact his boss is the Queen of England and through her the Bilderbergers who selected him in the first place, are behind all the moves towards EU integration and the various treaties including Maastricht, Rome and the Lisbon accords.

What Jonathan Freedland is saying, in code, is that Cameron is disappointing the Bilderbergers and their attendees among the” Great and the Good”, which of course includes the directors and liegemen and woman of Guardian Media Group.

David Cameron has allegedly been promised a big UN job on the basis of controlling his back benchers, hood-winking the UK public, trouncing UKIP and keeping us in the EU.

To date, his performance on all counts, has been lamentable.

He fails to make the case for the EU even though I personally cannot see any merit in it, he pretends to offer a referendum even though he knows he will not be there to conduct it and he pretends that the “British people” are his masters whilst making decisions in secret, being told what to do in secret and then making those same British people pay for his “private meetings” whilst acting in his official capacity.

The EU demand for £1.7 billion gbp extra is a nonsense because nobody has ever signed off the EU accounts as kosher so nobody really knows who owes what to whom, despite the EU employing over 500 accountants.

As for David Cameron not knowing, he was clearly angry which suggests that George Osborne dropped him in it to further his own leadership ambitions by giving his supporters a signal that Cameron was not prepared when he went to the EU.

Certainly he was made to look foolish and Mrs Merkel was said to have made him look foolish by saying that the rebate was part of a process that he already knew about.

We have a better person in the form of Boris Johnson to replace this loser and the Conservative Party if it is to stand any hope of even jointly retaining power must muster the “men in grey suits” and consign “Call me Dave” to political oblivion.

John Gelmini