Rich Bankers Skip
While getting completely brain numbed by politics generally recently, thanks to the paper ripping, feminist, jaw dropping nonsense that cavort these arenas of debate induced with flowery champagne cocktails in the members lounge. I’ve not seen so much mince on display since waiting in the school dinner queue; so I’ve realised why urgent financial matters have been lost with these types of people, who are more at home with licking boots than actually giving the bankers the boot. Now I’ve seen the bigger picture.
Intelligent law making isn’t required. MP’s simply don’t have it. They are there to make Gordon Brown look better than the average, even though he performs below average. Most of his new policies were old policies that had been left in the filing cabinet marked ‘Save for a rainy day, when the Sun doesn’t shine’. This leaves ‘bankers with a home-run advantage. Lord Levy who conducted the initial inquiry regarding ex Chief RBS Fred Goodwin forgot to ask about his massive pension pot; which now I hasten to add has been forgotten via the media and lost amongst the black-hole of debt the UK public have had to endure. On top of huge bank bail-outs to major banks this year, not once but four times.
Business secretary ‘Prince of Darkness’ Mandelson’s panto styled speech about the banks was exactly what you would expect from the Labour Dame. Highly entertaining all for the wrong reasons; maybe it was because he was in the ‘Gay’ capital of UK, eager to sample Brighton’s bars of cockles and mussels. He certainly gains support in just charismatic gesturing with just one flicker of an eyebrow, compared to Darling, whose innate morose approach was styled on a shipping forecast.
Each of them were explaining the inapt financial system, which taxpayers bailed out banks especially RBS Royal Bank of Scotland; whereby 70% is in our ownership as shareholders. They even condoned the huge pay bonuses that have continued after the bail-out. Yet since the perfect financial storm that through the system into chaos; new blood has been given the wonderful chance of feathering yet more nests. That is Mr Stephen Hester, who replaced shamed Fred the Shred Goodwin at the helm at RBS. The deal is worth 9.3 Million pounds after three years of revamping the public image and current finances. The shareholders, that is ‘us’ had no say in the recruitment process or package offered. Same old RBS and Westminster illogic; that baffles those who still think we live in a democracy. Hester isn’t short of a few bob as it is, going by his bright complexion and well nourished figure. Bold bouncy and who wouldn’t be; after a bumper Christmas hamper deal that makes his small current eyes sparkle.
RBS certainly know how to rub the public faces into the muddy soil. The deal is of course covers many escape goats as a goat hurder. This is what angers the unions and shareholders. Hester has to double the share price within three years to hit the target. Potentially he could just sit his large rear and watch Jeremy Kyle all day while eating jam doughnuts and still hit his target; the share price was initially that low. Welcome to banking, at the top. Where even poor performances can be dwarfed by obscurities can pay a hedge fund manager enough for a small island; one that hasn’t been hit by a tsunami yet.
RBS has been effectively given without too much hard graft a mind boggling 20 Billion by an administration that claims it is a great opportunity for the UK taxpayer who will reap rewards in the long term, so our trust is in a ‘fat cat’ chief named Hester, who is a banker. I predicted the banking bust in February 2007; and mark my words the components of RBS equity will be sold off during the next ten years to cover up dismembered figures which potentially would make Frankenstein look like a Shrek fairy-tale.
Basically, Hester will infiltrate huge cuts in workforces throughout the branches and I mean also NatWest who RBS bought in 2006. Hence why NatWest have been given a massive advertising budget in 2009 to let the UK public know what changes they’re making with weekend openings; if in the next quarter the figures do not show green roots a further 30,000 employees will lose their jobs; while already multi-millionaire Hester can still endorse his bumper deal at RBS by catering for shareholders and going offshore, by playing the hedge fund game and that is by taking huge sums of cash and doubling up in tax havens across the globe. Netting huge profits for accustomed shareholders and meeting targets that Westminster profoundly assumes will be tough. It isn’t just about Hester’s salary the Unions should be furious about. It is the unjust means in which the financial ‘free market’ system works as it doesn’t help for an ethical practice across the spectrum for the RBS employees.
For individuals who have ethics in this sector, the package is outrageous for a CEO whose being paid by UK taxpayers. Hester must have thought ‘I’m going to redecorate my HQ just like Elton John’s walk in wardrobe’. Hester can use the financial tools already in-place that got RBS in the mess they originally got into that will repeat the risky dangers that stalk the Capitalistic free market syndrome, learning absolutely nothing in what the toxic sub-prime markets can do to any lucrative corporation. RBS will endeavour short term wealth but won’t learn from past events.
The main problem for RBS is making a toxic debt package worthy of buying for competitors, at present the global financial sector is at stalemate, that won’t budge so freely till 2014, that is if a second wave to the perfect financial storm doesn’t hit the shores and if that happens Hester would still get his pay-off and huge pension bonuses, because RBS can prove they were not responsible. Hester has three years tinkering with markets without making a major splash. He doesn’t even have to stick his head out of his ivory tower.
This last year RBS have displayed no funding cuts in corporate entertainment to privileged shareholders and other ‘fat cats’ who cream off the dismal financial ruin the UK has endured. Over 300,000 pounds was spent on Gland Slam events like Wimbledon, this is after the unlawful acts that lead to 24 Billion record losses, due to non regulation and a poor FSA team. Who in fact deplore RBS’s stance on corporate entertainment to that magnitude, but this is what you get when the regulatory body is too weak to reform measures of what is required.
I don’t take the same stance of US Paul Krugman the Nobel Prize winner in economics; he claimed that Gordon Brown has changed the financial world, because before changing the world financial system you have to change your countries financial system, to prove it works. He is incapable of even passing through rules via the FISCAL stimulus, so all that he says on the economy has to be fitted with the rhetoric he continues to display to the UK public.
RBS has a balance sheet of 1.3 Trillion, to put this into reality, the whole of the UK generates 1.5 Trillion and that was before the down-turn kicked in. The size of banks has got too big; RBS needs strict regulating by the FSA so new powers have to be drafted to enable deals to be capped during a recession period. For Hester to hit his target and reach for a huge pay-check in 2012 the share-price will have to be 70p, it really is a game of roulette, he will make even more money from private accounts alone so Westminster would of missed that trick. – The ‘Free market’ is a highly risky genre, when it comes to dissolving people’s lives and incomes. Yet no-one is accountable to the demise of a nation.