Bob Diamond forgoes bonus as Barclays fined for Libor manipulation

[Mich the Tester]

They'll get new jobs and besides, they're already minted.

As this is fraud, I think a spell inside would be appropriate for all staff who acted dishonestly in this falsifying of data, plus fines of all bonuses they received since they started doing it.

It's the only way to disincentivise such behaviour. All those in favour say "Aye"...

aye

[darmstadt]

What's the point of fining the company? All that happens is the directors fire a load of innocents to try and recover the loss. 290 million? That's easy; sack or outsource 4000 to 5000 people and the fine's paid. Stop this nonsense; if offenses were committed they were committed by individuals doing things probably authorised by other individuals, so those individuals should be prosecuted instead of giving some silly fine that just hits innocent bystanders.

Agreed. What happened to the director(s) of the Herald of Free Enterprise shipping line (can't remember the name) or the directors of railway companies who have serious accidents? Financial companies are no different, or are they? Perhaps because most politicians nowadays come from the financial services area and hope to return and so have very close links then they're afraid to castigate them.

[darmstadt]

Liked this comment in the Guardian:

We watched as the banks greed caused the deepest World recession since the 1930's. We see a quarter of our youth on the unemployment scrap heap.


We watch as the banks receive a trillion pound public investment from us the tax payers.


We watch as the opportunity cost of this investment is played out as the deepest cuts to our public infra structure since WW2/the Great Depression. Millions will be made unemployed. Hundreds of thousands will lose their homes. University fees triple to £9,000 a year.


We watch as this artificially maintained recession drives down wage demands and keeps us, the public, subservient with declining living standards whilst the global elite make out like bandits.


We watch as the banksters trouser billions of pounds in bonuses and pay rises whilst we, the public, endure years of stagflationairy reductions in living standards.


We watch as banks trouser further billions from quantitative easing and use it to speculate on oil and food, driving up the prices we have to pay to live.


We watch as the banks have enough money left over from the taxpayers gifts, after their bonuses of course, to fund over half of the Tory parties election budget.


We watch as the Tories reward the banksters with changes to the tax laws that allow no tax to be paid on overseas profits. A policy that no other country in the world has except Switzerland. In addition the Tories remove the bankers bonus tax and reduce corporation tax,


We watch as the banks reward the global elite by maintaining a shadowy network of trusts, quasi banks and other tax avoidance vehicles based in Jersey, Sark, Guernsey, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands etc.
The level of avoidance is gargantuan with for example the authoritative US periodical TaxAnalysts estimating that conservatively in 2007 that the Crown Dependencies hosted about US$1trillion of potentially tax evading assets. This equates to about $30billion a year in avoided income tax alone and only measures the scale of avoidance in three tax havens.


We watch as the banks rip us off by borrowing from each other using insane FRB techniques and the absurdly low Bank of England rate (0.5%) yet charge us, the public, interest at 10 times this level on our loans and mortgages. We watch as the banks and their shadow arms and hedge funds short all the crippled European sovereign bond markets precipitating huge interest rate costs to taxpayers and threatening another economic collapse.


We watch as the banks borrow at 0.5% and then force our governments to pay them 3-4% interest on the bonds needed to pay for the taxpayers bailout of the banks. This is in itself insane and costs the government £20-30billion a year. The banks bought 97% of the government debt issued over the last 6 months (£36 billion worth) and trousered a tidy 3.8% interest, you and I have to pay them for the privilege.


We the public should demand not just ring fencing but separate ownership of casino and retail banks.


We should demand a Robin Hood or Tobin financial transaction tax.


We should demand the return of the bonus tax.


We should demand an increase in contingent capital ratios to the levels seen in the 1970s and the level adopted now by Switzerland (e.g. 20%).


We should demand an end to Over The counter derivative trading and insist on these monstrous immoral bets be traded only in registered stock exchanges.


We should demand an end to tax avoidance by transfer pricing and the use of shadowy secrecy tax havens such as Jersey, the Cayman Island and Gibraltar. Places where the banks shelter the money of every gangster, terrorist, third world dictator and mafia boss on the planet.


It's not likely though with the banks providing over 50% of Tory party funding and a third of Tory MPs having worked or are still working in the City. These people would rather lie and put the blame on previous government or public sector workers.


We are not all in this together. We are living in a kleptocracy. The bankers should pay for the mess they caused. They should be taxed, not ordinary citizens or public sector workers.


When will somebody do something about these people?

[Doggy Styles]

Liked this comment in the Guardian:

Bit long isn't it?

[DodgyAgent]

Liked this comment in the Guardian:

And let us not forget who happily borrowed such large sums of money to spunk away on useless public services thus encouraging the banks

Are these the very same banks that spent vast fortunes of their ill gotten gains paying huge wages to IT contractors?

[TimberWolf]

The Bible may have been wrong about God, but it nailed bankers.

[Mich the Tester]

Liked this comment in the Guardian:

It's not likely though with the banks providing over 50% of Tory party funding and a third of Tory MPs having worked or are still working in the City. These people would rather lie and put the blame on previous government or public sector workers.

Yep, all very well, but remind me who was in power in the UK while the bank crisis built
up and then went bang.

Some valid points, but rather disingenuous to attack the tories over this.

[DodgyAgent]

The Bible may have been wrong about God, but it nailed bankers.

Was Jesus a banker?

[EternalOptimist]

Was Jesus a banker?

No
but he got hammered with tax

[darmstadt]

Are these the very same banks that spent vast fortunes of their ill gotten gains paying huge wages to IT contractors?

Probably, and then in order to fix the **** ups they made by outsourcing. You pay for quality or do you shop at TKMaxx?