RBS is the people’s bank. Stop bribery!

January 29th, 2014

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Bear with me while I get this straight. A bonus is payment for work above and beyond what is covered by a salary. To a modern bank, “above and beyond” does not mean an excess of kindness to a client. It means an excess of profits to the bank.

This week, Ross McEwan, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and his eight top executives stepped forward to “forego their bonuses”, with the air of penitents posing as the Burghers of Calais. The towers of Canary Wharf echoed to the wails of their self-sacrifice.

What bonuses have the “RBS Nine” foregone? This bank is reportedly losing £8bn this year, or just under £1bn per top executive. If such a loss merited a bonus to be foregone, what would a bigger loss merit? If bankers deserve excessive incomes for abnormal profits, surely they should take a hit for abnormal losses. RBS is the people’s bank, or 80% of it, nationalized for its own salvation, not the enrichment of its staff.

Having stepped through one looking glass, McEwan then stepped through another. He said his gesture reflected “the need to show leadership”. What this meant is unclear since the bank then promised bonuses of 200% of salary to other senior staff, presumably including those responsible for “bad decisions” in the past. He stressed that not all the staff made bad decisions. There were clearly good chaps at heart. Since they would have gained abnormal bonuses had they made abnormal profits it seemed unfair, since they had not, still to deny them the bonuses. So they would get them anyway, lest they get upset and leave. This is apparently the “City culture”. It is like freeing the Great Train Robbers to see if they can get away with it another time.

Bonuses above 100% of salary have been forbidden by the European Union not as only grossly unfair on bank customers forced to pay them but as a prime cause of the 2008 credit crunch. A specific resolution of shareholders would be needed to go up to a 200% cap. The British government protested the cap as unwarranted intrusion on British sovereignty. This was admirably Eurosceptic, but the cap was a sensible if desperate move to curb the reckless greed that so distorted financial markets prior to the crash. Those questioning if this is necessary should see the Wolf of Wall Street, not for the film but for the young bankers cheering in the audience.

Outsiders should beware of trying to run other people’s businesses. But outsiders can hardly stifle screams of rage at what is being done with their money. It has come as a shock to most Britons to discover that their bank no longer regards itself as having a fiduciary relationship with its customers, be they depositors or borrowers. It is out to make money from them, to enrich its staff and shareholders.

Five years ago taxpayers were forced to give RBS £45bn as “too big to fail”, to cover its losses and in the hope that it might atone for its part in the crash by aiding economic recovery. It did no such thing. We now learn much of the £45bn was lost, much of it on penalties for activities more fitting to a loan shark in a North Circular layby. There was the mis-selling of mortgaged securities, payment protection insurance and interest rate hedges. There are fines for sanctions busting and exchange rate fixing and “settlements” for multifarious dodgy practices.

Anyone driving a car while listening to BBC Radio 4’s File on Four on Sunday might have been forgiven for a fit of road rage.

It concerned an RBS unit known quaintly as the global restructuring group (GRG) and its property sidekick, West Register. It appeared designed to squeeze the pips from small businesses in the slightest trouble, if possible driving them to the wall to dump their assets on the bank’s balance sheet. A thousand victims had reported cases to the recent Tomlinson inquiry, which reports today to the Treasury select committee. This was happening while George Osborne and Vince Cable were showering RBS with subsidies to “help small business”. Did they know nothing?

Bankers protest that bonuses are vital for them to stay competitive in the global market. One senior banker told me his trading teams were like modern footballers, their players always looking round the City for the highest bidder. He said high bonuses – RBS last year set aside £600m to pay them – enabled salaries to be kept lower and costs more flexible. They staved off raids from the wolves of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. It was, of course, all in the national interest.

City lobbyists protest that London is closer to New York than to Europe. It must keep up with high-rolling casino banking if it is to compensate the taxpayer for past losses. This sounds suspiciously like addict talk. Banks are said to have “learned the lessons of the crash”. Yet the same culture remains in place, whereby the players gain upside benefit without bearing downside loss. That loss is born by shareholders, in the case of RBS, the taxpayer. Many of the activities for which RBS now faces litigation – such as Libor-rigging – were driven by bonuses well after the crash.

Continental European banks do not pay such bonuses and accepted EU measures to stop them. This must be right. Even in Wild West London. It is hard to believe there are no honest and intelligent young people prepared to work for a sensibly restructured RBS without an annual festival of bribery. Whatever taxes and jobs are supposedly dependent on London’s banks, it cannot recompense the devastating damage their practices have done to the British economy.

I am sure the new RBS means well. It is engaged in a race against time, regulation and litigation to build up its asset base and return to sane retail trading. But the RBS Nine have put Osborne and Cable on the spot. These ministers are custodians of the state’s majority stake in RBS and must approve or reject the 200% bonuses. They cannot possibly approve them.

For the nine executives to feed the greed of a migratory elite so it can continue gambling with the public’s money is bad enough. For them now to challenge Osborne and Cable to overrule them, so they can blame future losses on “political meddling”, is not leadership but cowardice. It is an ominous augury for this madcap institution.

MSM/AS/MHB

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