Who should pay the bankers this time?

[Elmbeard]

Last time, it was the taxpayer who bailed out the banks, and we are all paying for it now because of the budget deficit on all the borrowing and cuts. Also borrowers are made to pay many times the interest rate to that on offer to savers, and that profit goes into the bankers' bonus pot.

Now, the banks are going to be ordered to pay back the surviving small businesses they swindled when they pushed them onto the swap scheme.

But the priority of the banks is to pay the current crop of bonuses to their executives and traders, not to compensate ruined businesses. They have contractual obligations to them that cannot legally be broken. Arranging generous renumeration packages to yourself is the other part of the job. So there won't be any money left by the time they are ordered to repay these troublesome small businesses.

Should the taxpayer be called on once again to prop up the banks?

Should Osborne insist to the Germans that more EU money is diverted to the financial centres in London, as the main condition for staying in the EU?

Should we all stop bashing the bankers, because it is getting boring?
The swap scandal is quite appalling. The banks pushed their business customers onto the interest rate swap schemes advising them interest rates would rise, but knowing full well they were lobbying successfully the Bank of England to drop interest rates to well below inflation and keep them there, giving the banks free licence to make huge charges to their customers. For that piece of trickery, they get millionaire bonuses, and this is endorsed by both Labour and Conservative chancellors.