Not content with focusing public ire on those social spongers who have the temerity to be unemployed or disabled, government has scored a great populist coup, and caused great rejoicing in the land of the tabloids, by decreeing that it is quite acceptable to kill burglars with machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers, tactical nuclear weapons or any of the other items the British householder keeps by them for such an emergency.
But if a burglar were to strip my home of its entire contents, it would not reach a tenth in value of the money that is going to be taken from me in taxation by government for the rest of my life to fund the bank bailouts in which my cash was given to reckless and incompetent bankers to cover their gambling losses.
Not only have they taken all my money, the majority of the money I shall be paying to cover it for the rest of my life, will consist of interest to the bankers because the government borrowed at interest from the bankers the money it then gave gratis to the bankers to bail them out.
And, as doubtless you will have noticed, nothing changed. No reduction in massive salaries and bonuses, no split of casino from high street banking, no transaction tax to deter multiple speculative trades. A million more unemployed, but none of them investment bankers – they have however sacked over a hundred thousand mostly female staff from their high street branches, which were the only sensible and profitable bit of the operation. No bankers in jail, not even for LIBOR fraud. Quantitive Easing, or printed money, is given not for infrastructure projects to produce growth, but given to banks to improve their liquidity. They do not lend it on to companies but pay it to themselves, as bonuses.
Forget burglars. Shoot a banker.
Right On, Craig, never mind….. Come the revolution 🙂
Am currently in Madrid – I think I am catching the mood!
You will find a similar mood in Rickmansworth
Great post Craig, except for capitulating to the new spelling of gaol. Is there any chance of government demanding seats on the boards of banks that receive bailouts?
Personally, I don’t think they are “worth the bullet.” Just reuse a greasy rope over and over. Oh, and create jobs by making them pay (plus transaction fees) to have their graves dug before they are dispatched.
This never took off. I don’t think people trust Facebook groups.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/wbankers/
The Daily Mash is of a similar opinion
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/still-not-okay-to-attack-banks-who-steal-your-house-2012100944162
“Hush, my dear,” he said. “don`t speak so load, or you will be over-heard- and I should be ruined. I`m supposed to be a Great Wizard.”
“and aren`t you?” she asked.
Not a bit of it, my dear; I`m just a conman.”
“You`re more than that,” said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone;”you`re a humbug.”
“Exactly so!” declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if it pleased him. “I am a humbug.”
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
“THe Magic Art of The Great Humbug”
No more to be said, really. It’s just down to quality vs quantity…Lee-Enfield vs Kalashnikov. The latter is preferable if you find a lot of bankers in one place, the former if it’s personal.
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=212.0;wap2
What a menace they are Bankers and Merchants.
Fair play though Its a “survival of the fittest, not the honest.”
To be fair the system is all most a level playing field. I say “almost.”
The Secret of Oz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI
I like the idea. The poor Irish and Spanish must be feeling the same. I wish I could find that figure quoted – that the bailout of the Irish banks will cost each household something like 2000 Euros per year over the next 10 years to pay off. That’s a hell of a burden on people for the Government to impose. The bankers of course walk out of it with their millions of dollars in severance and pensions, bonuses and guarantee getting another job with even more money!
If these data are to be trusted, (source: http://www.greystonesguide.ie/irelands-comparative-per-capita-bailout-costs/)
Those who guard and sit at the gates of the God of capitalism – CAPITAL , may be likened to small Gods. The only remedy for cutting them down to size is the magic of the marketplace. With fibre optic instantaneous communications between millions of players in the financial markets and computerised accounting, the need for Banks to achieve scale economies does not arise. The big banks may be broken up, with capital aggregating lenders in turn serving as their super bankers. Government simply cannot attract the kind of talented gamekeepers required to oversee the Enron kind of MBA crooks, only the marketplace and shareholders will reign in the bankster wannabees.
@ John Goss 11 Oct, 2012 8:00 am
John, the trouble I find with Facebook is that it tries to be all things to all people! It’s fine at a purely social level but not so good IMO for dealing with serious matters. That’s my perception anyway – suffice to say I’ve never really felt in my comfort zone when using it.
Agree Brian. Not on it. Too invasive of one’s privacy.
This is what they are up to with their British operation. Note the creep Zuckerberg’s comments at the bottom. Talk about helping people. He helped himself and went off with the money before the share price fell away.
“Facebook has been accused of taking the British taxpayer for a ride after experts suggested the company had depressed sales figures and that the website’s average UK employee earned more last year than the whole social media network paid the exchequer.
The British arm paid its 90 UK-based staff an average of £275,000 each in 2011 while contributing just £195,890 to the Treasury’s coffers, according to the firm’s latest accounts filed at Companies House.
The website also reported UK revenues of £20.4m, a fraction of the £175m that media analysts estimate the firm made in the UK in 2011.
Most of the sales are believed to have been booked in the firm’s international headquarters in Dublin, where they will attract lower corporation taxes.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/10/facebook-uk-taxes
Note the salaries. That’s a total bill of £24.75m for the blessed 90.
SOME governments are capable of holding the guilty to account –
http://www.progress.org/2012/recovery.htm
And it works, apparently.
If not a fraud, a scam. The vultures piled in expecting a bonanza.
The anger surrounding the sharp decline in the value of Facebook shares deepened yesterday when investors who have lost millions discovered that its founder apparently saved more than £110m by selling early.
Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s founder, sold shares in the company worth £720m on Friday, the day it floated on New York’s Nasdaq stock market. But the price plummeted soon afterwards, from the $38 a share (£23.95) at which Mr Zuckerberg sold his stock. The price difference meant Mr Zuckerberg saved £111m by getting out early.
/..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mark-zuckerberg-saved-111m-by-selling-facebook-shares-before-stock-slumped-7786269.html
The shares are currently just over $20. Zuckerberg is thinking of going into the search engine business.
Yeah, go over to the daily slog for another issue surfacing from RBS, and how he puts it ‘the raping of SME’s’
I kinda like the feeling of getting this debt killed under ‘ODIOUS debt’. America did it in Iraq, and didn’t Chavez do it as well.
The government’s only serious economic policies (out of I think, habit and quid pro quo from contributions) are directed at keeping the banks afloat; the banks don’t give a damn about anything but their survival and holding onto their right to commit the next set of crimes.
This approach has been shown (Japan) to lead to economic stagnation with banks clinging on to ‘solvency’, so called zombie banks.
Iceland has the right approach, if necessary let banks go to the wall and actually indict some bank CEOs; the policy is already paying dividends and, not un-importantly, feels so much better.
I will not be content until every lamp-post along Pall Mall has a dead politician, banker, journalist, and judge hanging by their feet. The “Royal” family can fuck off as well, bunch of freaks and perverts.
I propose Dennis Skinner to be PM, with George Galloway as Foreign Secretary. The Chancellor will be picked by national lottery to ensure that at least 50% of decisions are correct (unlike the 0% we have had for the last 20 years.)
[Mod/Jon: posted as Apple Pies, but has posted in the past under Ginger Nuts, so fixing]
The problem with bankers, politicians, arms manufacturers etc is that they are all singing from the same hymnsheet.
Their song is roughly, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, and to hell with any stupid peasant who wants honesty and decency to count for anything.”
The bankers back scratching consists of robbing us all blind. The politicians then change the laws so the bankers are protected. And the arms manufacturers? Afghanistan, Iraq…
“This never took off. I don’t think people trust Facebook groups.”
How can people trust an outfit that was created with CIA funds, has robbed investors and pension funds of billions in a fraudulent IPO and managed to pay less that half a million tax on UK profits of £170 million?
[Mod/Jon: posted as Apple Pies, but has posted in the past under Ginger Nuts, so fixing]
Good argument, and although it’s fun to engage in a bit of hyperbole, I wouldn’t condone killing anyone, banker, burglar or otherwise. There is far too great a tendency to trivialise and normalise killing in our society.
.
Why not take the lead from Iceland, and bring criminal trials against them, then seize their assets and lock them up? Much more civilized.
Facebook is a good example of what’s wrong. It consists – entirely – of binary digits. It has no intrinsic value whatever – what is being sold is shares in the intangible expectation of its making money from (a) buying other shares and (b)advertising revenue. Which is derived from selling the intangible expectation of making money to the advertisers. Who in turn are selling the intangible expectation to some manufacturers, who pass the costs on to the consumer, who has actually obtained nothing extra for the extra cost, or to yet more salesmen of intangible expectations like banks and insurance agents…
There’s nothing there. It’s a vacuum. The concept of value has evaporated.
Sam. Quite agree. Then shoot them?
“…they have however sacked over a hundred thousand mostly female staff from their high street branches.”
An indication that they employed mostly women in the first place:
http://jimmygiro.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/measuring-real-bias-in-employment.html
Craig: We might spare a few to put in cages and hurl filth at. Be reasonable.
Keiser this week on banks –
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/episode-351-max-keiser/
Kicks off with the Guardian being all things to all readers, and you may recognise the taxi driver….
Gideon should be sent on an apprenticeship to Iceland, with his preferred set of whips, enough cocaine to keep his mind numbed from the otherwise normal thinking that might break out and a bible, just in case.
I like the idea of hanging them upside down from lamp posts, not withstanding that they need strengthening due to bankers considerable weight, it would give every child and dog in town the opportunity to show what they think of him and it would stop cars damaging lamp posts.