The bankers have laid the apologies on thick this week, even though it was difficult to see this as anything other than an insincere attempt to put some heat under the iceberg of anger that threatens to sink them forever. What is lacking however is the apology from Brown and Labour. No doubt Gordon Brown would choke if he ever said the word "sorry".
Labour find it politically useful to see the bankers making grovelling apologies. Brown hopes this will deflect attention for his own responsibility. And reading sites such as Labourlist (which has rapidly degenerated into a craven mouthpiece for the government) you can see how desperate Labour are to pin all the blame for the entire mess on the bankers.
The reality was that the entire culture of greed and irresponsibility in the banks not only went unchallenged by Labour, they were happy to encourage it. They fed it with a light touch regulatory machine and a tax system that encouraged top bankers to behave irresponsibly. That culture sucked in both Labour and the banks and both were happy to perpetuate it. One side has apologised. Labour hasn't done so yet. I doubt they ever will.
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4 comments:
"The hospitality enjoyed by top civil servants - including meals, trips to the opera, tennis and cricket matches - has been revealed for the first time"
"The most prolific entertainers included oil giants such as Shell and BP, financial and advisory firm KPMG, and banks such Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche. Newspapers and the BBC also featured heavily in the 90-page list."
"Failed banks HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland found the money to host key Whitehall figures, as the government prepared to bail them out with billions of pounds in public funds."
"RBS took Gordon Brown's top foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald - now ambassador to the US - to lunch last January. In February they dined Home Office permanent secretary David Normington, and in May stood lunch for Foreign Office mandarin Sir Peter Ricketts."...
http://tinyurl.com/d6g6pa
"I was stunned," he wrote, "to find that the police were prepared to approve – ie not fight – our licence on condition that we installed CCTV capturing the head and shoulders of everyone coming into the pub, to be made available to them on request."
"He wrote to his MP, Emily Thornberry, but got no reply until today when she sent a letter to the Guardian – a somewhat patronising note, suggesting that this was indeed a civil liberties issue and that the staff from the nearby local Labour headquarters should be able to come and go "without being stolen from and intimidated". She also used the opportunity to take a swipe at the local Liberal Democrat council, which has refused to install street CCTV in Islington."...
http://tinyurl.com/cadbqc
25 January 2009
"Enjoying the recession"...
http://tinyurl.com/cgewoa
"British GDP Has Already Collapsed by 30%"
"British GDP (AMBI) at the end of 2008 is estimated at £1.275 trillion, against £1.267 trillion at the end of 2007. However sterling has collapsed against major global currencies by 30% or more, which translates into a real terms collapse in the countries GDP of 30%, i.e. 2007 GDP of $2.7 trillion has now fallen to $1.8 trillion a collapse in GDP of over 30%. The Government, Bank of England and FSA are failing in their primary duty which is to preserve the purchasing power of the currency."
"The Labour government has destroyed the purchasing power of the British Pound by 30% so as to save on 1% or 2% on the actual officially published GDP data during 2009. That's a price of 30% for a net benefit of at most 1.5% which will still not prevent a deep recession from occurring. Quantative Easing is madness personified which for several months had been supported by the mainstream press which my November article illustrated -Bankrupt Britain Trending Towards Hyper-Inflation? , which sacrifices long-term growth for possible short-term benefit"
"Therefore whatever is the conclusion of this analysis in terms of sterling GDP contraction during 2009, what readers need to remember is that the real purchasing power of Britain's currency loss of 30% means that the countries GDP has already been sacrificed in lieu of hoodwinking the electorate into believing that things are not as bad as they actually are"...
http://tinyurl.com/c3bs6g
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