07 Apr 2013
Nearly five years after the crash, we are being urged by some quarters to stop bashing the bankers. The men (and they are mostly men) who brought the world to its knees in an exercise of hubris, greed and plain deceit are asking to be left alone. Given the pain and misery they created for ordinary men and women who took no part in their bizarre and inane grab for cash, it seems to me the bankers have got off scot-free. Their bonuses remain tightly wrapped up in their personal bank accounts, unaffected by the disaster their activities caused which secured their bonuses in the first place; those with knighthoods for Services to Deception remain part of the social elite; and nothing serious has been done to stop the crisis from happening again. Far from laying off the bankers, governments around the world should be encouraged by public anger to properly tackle the root causes of the crimes committed against ordinary people by the banking industry which has absolutely failed to acknowledge its role in creating the catastrophe. The banks are still too big to be allowed to fail and if they go down they will take us all with them, unless once again ordinary people are asked to save their necks. This period in history will surely be regarded as a time when governments took leave of their senses and allowed the people they are supposed to serve to be hijacked by the most malign of corporate influences.