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.

[riga mortice]

That old bag thatcher because she de-regulated the banks which caused the whole mess that sadly right wing press is blaming on labour

[Thunderoussheet565]

According to our enlightened government, the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have to pay them.

I was going to stick in a few lines about fairness and equality, etc or about protecting the most vulnerable in our society, from the ‘Coalition Agreement’ ( remember that ) but I couldn’t find any. At the time it looked a sparse document, devoid of any detail, but having not had a look for a while and now looking back, it now looks really shoddy, like a low grade homework on an ink-stained copybook, and as a blueprint for government (!!?), it now looks a remarkably accurate precursor of what we could expect from this government. It feels almost like something I could have come up with myself, on my own, in four days. There is a section about banking reform on Page 2. It’s ignorance or denial of the reasons of what caused the financial crisis in the first place shout out at you from the half page.

The most vulnerable in our society, just in the last two days now have to pay with extra rent for rooms that they don’t use ( of course this doesn’t apply to private landlords, so my advise to anyone caught in the government’s financial vice would be to go private and rent yourself a two bedroom flat which the government will willingly pay housing benefit for, as all of the tax payers money will end up in the pockets of private Tory voting buy-to-rent property barons/landlords. It’ll cost the taxpayer more, but hey, who cares as long as the money ends up in the ‘right’ pockets, right? ). Then today, we hear of the extra burden to be straddled across the backs of the poor, an extra 10% cut in JSA by way of extra council tax charges which were previously waived by councils. Add these to extra payments for housing costs due to the cap on housing benefit costs etc and millions of people in this country aren’t going to have more than about £50 a week to live on. From that, they have to take their gas, electricity, food and clothing. How they’re expected to be able to finance looking for work is a riddle that only this government seem to know the answer to, to any sane person, it’s an absurdity.

People are upset because David Cameron is giving a £36.92 rise a year to those on JSA ( 0.65% of government spending, benefit fraud accounts for 0.15% of government spending ), whilst at the same time giving the lucky 8,000 people who earn £1,000,000 or more, an average £106,000 per year by way of his tax cut for the richest.

If you work it out for yourself ( 2010/11 figures).
The 2,500,000 unemployed people get an extra £450m or 71p a week to live on and the 8,000 richest people who earn over £1,000,000 get an extra £848m or an average £2,038.46p a week to live on, some will get a lot more. ( £4.5 billion JSA * 1% = £450million ; 8,000 * £106,000 = £848 million )
Who are the biggest scroungers?

Get your calculator ready and spend a few minutes studying this excellent graphic.
Government spending by department, 2010-11: get the data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/...10-11#data

Coalition Agreement 2010
http://www.conservatives.com/~/media/Fil...hx?dl=true

Banker bashing is in the national interest and is a social and moral duty.

Free Willy – ‘ Mr Broon and Mr Bliar ‘ lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifbNL0t31Tw
The car is the UK, Cameron and Osborne are driving and you’re one of the runners.

[free willy]

Mr Broon and Mr Blair

[Vinni Pukh]

Banks operate with chinese walls.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
in fact it has to do this in certain areas to comply with financial law.

It is quite possible for a bank to suggest one thing to their business customers and not have any idea that another part of the same bank was lobbying to allow interest rates to drop

I am not saying it's right or wrong. I am just trying to educate you

you're welcome

[WhatsinaName]

More to the point where is Gordon Brown. He has not been seen in Westminster for months but is still drawing his salary and no doubt his expenses too..can someone in Kirkcaldy tell us where there MP is

[Odd Blob]

I know, I know.... why don't we Quantitatively Ease ourselves into Hyperinflation Heaven!?!

[Hypo - RPi]

Buddha. The swine are overdue some karma.

[John Ashtone]

Elmbeard your grasp of finances is one Tolkienian proportions, as he knew nothing whatsoever about economics he kept it out of his books, Tolkien was a wise man to do that.

I notice in Middle Earth they manage to get by with very little trade (certainly there isn't enough to support a City the size of Minas Tirith), and money hardly features, except to pay the drinks bill to Barliman Butterbur at the Ferrari Inn.

The Banks are not being bailed out again, they are paying back the money, your grasp on Economics is pitiful and I suggest you quietly go away until you know something about the subject.

Virtually every one of your statements is false.