Bankers’ Greed
In 2008, the greed and profligacy of the banking system crashed the world’s economy.
Bankers functioned without bounds; huge bonuses were given to people who recklessly sold subprime mortgages while making bets using credit default swaps on the ability of poor people to pay. That hedging of bets was at no risk or loss to themselves, it was a win-win for them. Ultimately, their appetite for more became insatiable.
Bankers sold mortgages to people who not only had poor credit but were out of work, they even sold to people who didn’t exist with signatures created robotically. They created an artificial housing bubble, and we all paid the price when it burst.
They took advantage of a time when the working class had some small sense of security when a family could budget a weekly shop, when they could cover the cost of their household bills and even afford a holiday along the Spanish coast.
Bankers popped champagne corks as borrowers took on impossible debt, helped by a media campaign that sold the dream of home ownership.
It was compounded with a run-away system of a buy now pay later mentality that gave instant credit to those wanting to fill their homes with mass-produced soft furnishings made in sweatshops thousands of miles away
That time came to an abrupt end.
The crash brought the whole system to its knees, with a lust for bigger and bigger profits, profits that translated into Bankers’ bonuses, the weight of which finally brought it all tumbling down.
It plunged billions into poverty, people lost their homes, jobs and in the extreme their lives.
This economic nightmare didn’t just happen, it was a result of collusion between the political class and Bankers, a result of the old boys’ network, revolving doors and lobbyists all working collectively allowing market forces to rampage unchecked, together they created one of the worst disasters the world has ever seen.
The victims of the bankers’ greed were made to pay the price while the bankers sold their next big lie, the lie that we needed them more than we need our public services, infrastructure, jobs and homes.
We witnessed countries throughout the EU being financially raped and forced to sell off all their public assets while having Austerity imposed on them. The wealth of nations was swallowed up, all in an effort to stop the too big to fail banks from collapsing.
In the UK under the Last Labour government, the decision with the majority support of parliament was to bail out the bankers using public money.
That bailout cost the people over £500 billion and 14 years of hard times brought about by Austerity.
Capping bankers’ bonuses was not a punishment, capping bonuses was done for our safety…
Of course, we could have taught the bankers a real lesson, we could have followed the Icelandic example and jailed them all for the fraud they committed, for the devastation to world economies they brought for the years of instability and Austerity, for all the suffering at their expense.
It was so refreshing to see the Icelandic judiciary sentence 36 bankers to a total of 96 years in prison. All the criminal cases were linked to the notorious crash of the banking system in 2008.
With Kwasi Kwarteng now Chancellor of the Exchequer lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses and making the UK a tax incentified home for the rich and elites, we all sit waiting for that greed to kick in. We wait for the next big thing followed by the next big crash.
Ironically Kwasi Kwarteng is a former employee at a list of financial establishments like JPMorgan Chase as well as at WestLB and not least at the hedge fund, Odey Asset Management, a company that has made a killing of 145% by wagering against British government bonds after shorting long-dated UK debt, it was revealed on Thursday after the mini-budget, no connection there then!
We now wait for the next disaster and the next reason we must hand over that massive pot of our pooled money that the government supposedly facilitates for our benefit.
We wait to give it all away to the robbing bastards.
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