Vince Cable: 'Bring back the guillotine...for bankers'

[The Brethren]

A Brit's take on bankers, guillotine style.


"Vince Cable: 'Bring back the guillotine...for bankers'

By Vince Cable

Last updated at 10:45 AM on 09th February 2009

The crass behaviour of Britain’s financial aristocracy rivals the last of the Bourbons. Marie Antoinette famously patronised the Parisian mob with her ‘let them eat cake’, while dining in luxury in the Tuileries.

The City bankers who ruined their banks but have been kept in employment by the taxpayer now demand we pay them their bonuses to maintain the aristocratic lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They know no shame and take no blame. They are lucky the British have no guillotines in stock.

Is the public outrage simply the politics of envy? I think not. Most of us have no problem with successful entrepreneurs earning lots of money. They rightly command respect, as the backbone of a healthy, private enterprise system.

The bonus-hunting bankers, by contrast, stand charged with destroying wealth on an epic scale. Foolish, greedy, irresponsible behaviour and excessive risk-taking led to massive losses and the crisis in the banking system which is now costing millions their jobs and many their homes. Why should such failure be rewarded?

The banks were deemed ‘too big to fail’. Otherwise, the bankers would be on the dole. The Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest has a balance sheet – assets and liabilities – much bigger than the British economy. It is one of the biggest banks in the world.
Had it been allowed to go bankrupt, it would have caused massive destruction: the financial equivalent of detonating an H-bomb.

So the Government had to step in, using taxpayers’ money to buy shares.

The chief culprit, the bank’s former chief executive Sir Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, has disappeared with his millions. But most senior executives and the whizzkids in the investment banking arm whose trading activities with billions of pounds of ‘toxic’ paper lie at the heart of the present crisis, have remained.

Managers now seek their ‘bonuses’, arguing that their unique skills are needed to dig the bank out of the hole they created. This is a little like the managers of a hospital with a terrible record of poor hygiene and premature deaths surviving the sack, then demanding more money as an incentive to improve.
Other banks, less in the spotlight, incubate the same culture of excessive pay. It was revealed last week that Barclays pays a man £40million to legally avoid British taxes – the ultimate insult to taxpayers who have to underwrite the bank."


More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1138673/Vince-Cable-Bring-guillotine--bankers.html

[PM Martin]

1. I have no sympathy for them.

The global cries of "sorry" from the bankers is meaningless unless there are stiff punitive damages brought against them for the horror that they have brought upon this world.

[The Brethren]

3. I have no sympathy either.

That is namely for the top bankers who've become gluttonous and greedy instead of smart and decent professionals. And these are also the same jerks who then whine to our government for hand-outs. And I'd love to see them have to face punitive damages as well as forced to pay every penny of their bailout money back to taxpayers.

Not all bankers are are awful. We use a small, local, independent bank that is family owned and run. They've been excellent and I can't imagine them being stupid enough to waste money and then pretend to be paupers. But the greedy ones should get the financial guillotine.

[Xenotime]

2. Can we use it on a few other people too?

[The Brethren]

4. LOL Sure. Sounds like you've got a list.

Are you checking it twice? :-)

Lucky for certain bankers, Wall Street "employees", and politicians that we aren't back in a time when things were a lot "simpler". When the majority of angry people weren't worried about being civil. Instead, they were more direct in their approach, which often was very unpleasant to the poor chaps who exploited them.