George Osborne - The Bankers' Toady

George Osborne is facing serious accusations of forcing financial regulators to abandon a review into Britain's banking culture, while under pressure from the banking industry's biggest names.

The Chancellor is "bowing" to demands to drop the so-called "banker bashing" probe set up after the Libor rate-rigging scandal, it is now being claimed. 

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced it will instead "engage individually with firms to encourage their delivery of cultural change". 

What a complete load of absolute utter drivel – what a pile of hyper wabble-babble!

“...Engaging... to encourage the delivery of cultural change...”

What on earth does that mean? What kind of weasel-worded, double-speak bollocks is this, and more importantly, wtf believes it?

Banks are operated like Mafia families, they are organised criminal entities, by their very definition. The culture of the banks is entirely criminogenic – they have very strong criminal tendencies and they will purposefully ignore or break any law which gets in the way of their making more and bigger profits.

The truth is that the bankers have got hold of Osborne, (who doesn’t need much persuading) and they have bullied him shamelessly into believing that they would relocate their base of operations elsewhere if the pressure on them to come clean got too strong.

Instead of putting them to their threat, Osborne (who likes bankers and who wants to believe them) has rolled over.

The decision comes after FCA chief executive Martin Wheatley announced, back in July, his decision to quit the post as Mr Osborne refused to renew his contract, which was due to end in March this year. Wheatley was beginning to make his demands heard and understood and he was dishing out some very strong penalties. The banks didn’t like it or him, and they lobbied Osborne to get rid of him.

MPs have already suggested the Chancellor was behind this decision to drop the review, months after it was set up. 

Labour's John Mann, who sits on the Treasury select committee, said : "George Osborne is behind it, without any question. 

"The cultural issues are what lay at the heart of the financial crisis. It's fundamental. Individuals took irrational risks with other people's money. 

Well, yes, but they also stole a whole heap of it as well!

"This decision leaves us hugely exposed into the future because it allows the banks to continue to go on acting as they acted before."

He added: "George Osborne is bowing to pressure from the banks. HSBC and Barclays have threatened to leave the country."

Conservative Mark Garnier, who also sits on the committee, said he was " .disappointed..." by the decision. 

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There has always been this great argument that perhaps the Treasury is having more influence over the regulator than perhaps it ought to and certainly, if I was looking for a Machiavellian plot behind what's happened here and the tone of the regulator, then I suppose I would start looking at the Treasury." 

Well, let us review the facts, because what is becoming clearer is not just that George Osborne is demonstrating his willingness to support the criminal banks, but is also proving him to be someone who has a difficulty in determining the truth.

Back in February 2013, just when it mattered and in the wake of a major Parliamentary Review which had attracted the attention of the whole world. the Chancellor made a speech to J.P.Morgan, in which he announced that the UK's big banks would be broken up if they failed to follow new rules to ring-fence risky investment operations from High Street outlets.

He needed some high-flown words to make it seem like he cared about bankig crime and that he was serious about protecting the public, but his threats were never going to happen.

The Chancellor referred to the scandalous conduct of the UK banks in recent years and said that the taxpayers were very angry at banks' behaviour and would never again be expected to bail them out.

The Chancellor's speech came on the same day the government introduced its Banking Reform Bill in Parliament.

Mr Osborne also said the banking system was not working for its customers, particularly small businesses and individuals.

The Chancellor appeared then to have accepted a major recommendation of an earlier Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards which called for a reserve power to "electrify the ring-fence" if banks did not implement reforms.

The Ring-Fence: The High Street activities of each UK bank were to be put into a separate subsidiary from its riskier investment banking.

Well, that was distortion number two. The big banks were not going to sit back and watch their flaky wholesale arms dislocated from their retail cash cows!

Other mis-statements include the requirement for bank directors to accept the responsibility for the actions of their subordinates. Well, that provision recently got pulled as well!

Electrification: Regulators would be given the power to split up an individual bank altogether, subject to certain conditions, if the regulator deemed that bank to be undermining the purpose of the ring-fence. Regulators would also review the entire UK banking industry each year to determine whether the ring-fence was proving effective.

Deposit Guarantees: The Financial Services Compensation Scheme currently guarantees up to £85,000 of every deposit in a UK bank, although this will be reduced to £75,000. 

Under the bill, if a bank goes bust, the FSCS will be paid out ahead of other people owed money by the bank. It means that the FSCS will be better able to recover the money it has guaranteed, which should reduce the potential bill for taxpayers if there is a shortfall.

Loss Absorbency: The bill gives the Treasury the power to impose tougher requirements on banks to increase their ability to absorb losses, in particular by requiring a bank to borrow money from markets in a form that allows the bank to impose losses on the lenders if it gets into trouble.

The Independent Commission on Banking, led by Sir John Vickers in 2011, had concluded that ring-fencing was the best way to protect "core" retail banking activities from any future investment banking losses.

Osborne said in his speech, at JP Morgan's administration offices in Bournemouth, that banks had failed to take responsibility for their actions. The 2008 crisis, which marked the start of the credit crunch, saw the government use £65bn of public money propping up Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group alone.

Osborne also referred to greed and corruption over banks' rigging of the Libor interest rate, and blamed recklessness by banks' so-called "casino operations" for dragging the financial system to the brink of collapse. The reputation of banks has been further undermined by scandals such as the fraudulent sale of payment protection insurance and the rigging of the Libor interest rate.

The chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, Andrew Tyrie, warned the banks could not be trusted: "Banks require discouragement from gaming the rules. They will always try to do so unless strong disincentives are put in place."

He said once the spotlight had moved away from the banks, they would be likely to try to soften the regime: "At that time, banks could be particularly active in testing the ring-fence and lobbying politicians to alter its design for their benefit. Electrification creates incentives against such behaviour."

Well, that was then and this is now, and the banks have been assiduously lobbying good old George to get him to relax these important measures. And George has done what the banks have demanded, he has toadied to them shamelessly and has overseen the dropping of any of the proposed measures.

Indeed, all the provisions worth anything and announced in the aftermath of the findings of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards have been dropped or cancelled.

So how can anyone believe a single word George Osborne says?

An enquiry into banking culture was needed more now than at any time, but it is the last thing the banks want to see being publicised.

Putting it as simply as possible, banks exist to reward greed and cupidity. Bankers demand and expect to be paid salaries and bonuses far beyond the dreams of avarice. But paying these ludicrous sums of money does not make the recipients any more worthy, they simply demand even more.

In order to satisfy this level of greed banks have to find other ways of generating revenues and profits, and the only real way in which they can do that is to encourage an exponential level of unmanaged risk taking, and an unspoken acknowledgement that criminal offences will have to be committed in order to raise the profits.

To do that, they employ middle management who are responsible for ensuring the lowest-level workers maintain the through-put of profitability, and who are paid high levels of remuneration. By far the largest percentage of that money is comprised of bonuses achieved from the earnings generated by their direct reports, so each manager has a fixed interest in looking the other way and not asking too many awkward questions about the profits being made by his team members.

Such an atmosphere generates a culture or a climate of ‘anomie’, or an ‘anomic’ environment, within which ordinary rules, norms and behavioural determinants are routinely ignored, and criminality is rewarded.

And when public concern at this culture of criminality becomes too pronounced, then some form of Parliamentary enquiry is announced, where the great and the good pontificate, a lot of hot air is generated, lots of promises are made, and proposals for change are tabled.

Then, when the tumult and the shouting has died, George quietly rolls over when the bankers threaten to take their toys away, and he gives in, allowing them to carry on like before.

George Osborne is presiding over an era where the reputation of the City of London has become degraded and trashed because its importance to international criminals has become greater than the Cayman Islands or any of the offshore, funny money centres.

For some reason, this man seems to feel that any kind of financial skulduggery can be permitted within the Square Mile, and it will not have any shaming or deleterious effect.

There used to be a time where Ministers of the Crown went to great lengths to at least give the impression that they meant what they said, but now, as far as George, the Bankers’ toady is concerned, he will promise to do one thing on one day, but as soon as his friends in the Square Mile start bleating, he will back down.

And all the time, the bankers continue to commit financial crimes.

We simply cannot continue to have a man in charge of the UK economy who behaves in this cavalier fashion.

Osborne is not a stupid man, and he has an army of lawyers to advise him, if he did but want to know. A man who connives in the commission of criminal offences, and who continues to permit such activities to occur, in the full knowledge of what he is doing, is as guilty of the crimes being committed as the person committing them.

He, as Chancellor, is in a unique position of authority and responsibility, and he is aiding and abetting these banking crimes, he is turning a blind eye to the provenance of the criminal money flooding into London; and by his deliberate failure to take positive action to legislate to help to prevent such crimes continuing to occur, is evidencing his complicity in the criminal culture he is facilitating within the banking world.

‘Shoot to Kill’ – Let us dispense with this pejorative catchword once and for all.

David Cameron is said to be seeking clarity on the law of police shooting, following a national security council meeting at which police chiefs demanded greater political and legal backing for police officers required to carry firearms on duty for the purposes of providing protection to the public and themselves.

The Sunday Times today carries the banner headline “...Cameron: Let Police shoot to kill...”

Now I seriously doubt that David Cameron, rash though he can be at times, has really said those stupid words.  

Let us dispense, once and for all, with the completely mistaken notion that there is or has ever been a police ‘shoot to kill’ policy in this country .

The phrase ‘Shoot to Kill’ when used in the context of public order policing contains a host of pejorative connotations, more reminiscent of the bad old days in Northern Ireland during the deaths occasioned in a major breakdown of public order which set the Provisional IRA and soldiers of the Parachute regiment at each other’s throats in the housing projects of Londonderry in 1972, and which came to be known later as ‘Bloody Sunday’.    

What we do have is a ‘Shoot to Protect’ policy, although it has been previously described in 2005 as a ‘Shoot to kill to Protect’ policy.

Every police officer who is authorised to carry a firearm knows full well that the decision to pull the trigger, an action which may very well have the possible consequence of ending someone’s life, rests with the officer and the officer alone. He cannot be ordered to fire by anyone else.  

He is authorised to pull the trigger when he forms a reasonable and genuinely-held belief that opening fire is necessary to protect himself, another officer or a member of the public whose life is being immediately threatened. Because the speed of the need to make the decision in many circumstances is so rapid, officers are enabled to use the defence if later challenged as to the lawfulness of their actions, that they had ‘an honest and instinctive’ belief that opening fire was reasonable.   

But let us be absolutely clear about the potential outcomes of pulling the trigger of a modern powerful firearm in the hands of a trained marksman.

Someone is almost certainly going to die.

So when the officer pulls the trigger, he is doing so, intending to kill the person at whom his gun is aimed.

Our police do not shoot merely to wound, to disable, to ‘wing’, they are aiming at a part of the body which if hit by a modern high velocity ballistic round, will almost certainly engage with a vital organ, with concomitant fatal consequences.

This is why, when the subsequent investigation of the shooting is carried out, a major aspect of the enquiry is aimed at determining the lawfulness of the officer’s actions, because if his actions were not to be determined to be lawful at the moment he fired, then he would not be able to avail himself of the defence the law provides.

Public policy demands that we cannot prosecute every policeman who discharges a firearm as a result of which someone dies, so we have to be absolutely satisfied that in the vast preponderance of cases, police officers act lawfully, unless there is a significant body of evidence to prove differently.

So we have what is called a ‘rebuttable presumption’ of lawful conduct on the part of an armed police officer.

This is an awesomely high standard of responsibility and the officers who exercise these powers are selected accordingly and trained rigorously, so that they can discharge their duties to the highest standard.

Under normal circumstances, these checks and balances should be sufficient to ensure that we have the fairest system we can devise for the control and regulation of firearms officers.

However, two issues have now intervened in this discussion, which are making it far more complex.

The first is the actions of the Independent Police Complaints Commission in the way in which they are handling the present investigation into the shooting.

In their own information published on Twitter, the IPCC state the following;

“...On Sunday there was evidence to indicate that a potential criminal offence may have been committed by the officer in his use of lethal force. We therefore made the decision to begin a criminal homicide investigation.

This is not a decision we took lightly. Our decision followed careful consideration of the evidence available and whether that evidence met the legal requirement that meant a criminal investigation should be carried out.

This afternoon a firearms officer has been arrested and interviewed under caution. All the other significant firearms officers have provided detailed statements as is normal practice.

The evidence we have at this stage does not mean that the officer definitively committed a criminal act and nor does it mean he will necessarily be charged with a criminal offence.

Ultimately once we have gathered all the evidence and concluded the investigation I will make the decision whether to formally refer the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service – if that happens it will be for them to decide whether to bring charges and what they should be.

The investigation is only a matter of days old and the evidential picture is continuing to develop and just as we took the decision that the investigation should be criminal, further evidence could mean we reconsider that decision.

It may be thought that this is a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs at this very early stage of events. The use of the phrase ‘criminal homicide’ investigation is vague, and unhelpful. 

Homicide is a generic phrase designed to cover the loss of life of a person at the hand of another. It can be a criminal act, but it can also be a non-criminal act, it depends on all the facts and the circumstances. The overwhelming inference from the IPCC is that the officer acted unlawfully in the discharge of his weapon, which if committed maliciously, could possibly lead to a charge of murder. The alternative is that the firearm was discharged accidentally in the heat of the moment, which could possibly lead to other different charges being deployed.

The IPCC report refers to a ‘criminal homicide investigation’. Quite what this means in these circumstances is unclear, just as is the suggestion that the matter could just as easily be reconsidered if further evidence is forthcoming.

What it does mean is that a lot of uncertainty is likely to hang over this case and will not help to clarify the policy issues.

The second area of concern, and one which I lay firmly at the feet of BBC reporter Laura Keunssberg arises out of the disingenuous use of the phrase ‘shoot to kill’.

She first used it in an interview with Jeremy Corbyn on 16^th November 2015, when discussing the Paris terrorist spectacle. Mr Corbyn was asked by the BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg whether he would be happy to order police or the military to shoot to kill if there was a similar attack on Britain's streets.

Mr Corbyn said: "I'm not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general - I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often can be counterproductive.

As a result of his thoughtful and considered answer, the press and members of his own party rounded on Mr Corbyn accusing him of being soft on terrorism, which culminated in his being accused of being a terrorist sympathiser by David Cameron, and threw the potential existence of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy into the public domain, where it had not previously existed.

Mr Corbyn was absolutely right and he was merely restating British public policy when he made his answer. The BBC later were forced to issue a clarification of the policy. 

“...The UK's police forces do not have a blanket "shoot-to-kill" policy - but at the same time, police can be legally justified in shooting even if the attacker ends up dead...”

I sincerely hope that this deliberately mis-stated nonsense about shoot to kill policies will now be abandoned, once and for all; that journalists will check their facts before looking for scandal headlines, and that the IPCC will handle the investigation into this event with a little more tact and professionalism than they have recently deployed in similar cases.

Why we cannot trust the Tories on banking crime – They are complicit in its commission.

The Tory Party has just conspired to give their friends in the Banking sector a complete ‘Get out of Jail card free’ for life.

If we ever had any doubts that the Tories are the party of the bloated criminal plutocrats in the financial sector, we only have to look at the wording of an obscure section of a new banking law that was very quietly pushed through Parliament this week.

They have routinely failed to investigate any banking crime committed by the Organised banking mafias, and none of their senior money launderers have gripped the rail at the Old Bailey.

They have continued to allow billions of pounds worth of dirty foreign money to flood into the City of London without requiring any routine ‘Know Your Customer’ checks being undertaken.

Now, the Tories have very neatly sidelined what should have been a most effective  crackdown on fat-cat bank bosses who connive at reckless criminal tactics within their institutions, enabling them to pad their profits and increase their already obscenely inflated bonuses.

Labour and Lib Dem peers joined together to voice their fury after the move which was slipped almost silently into an obscure new banking law . The change is being moved in the small print of the 60-page Bank of England Bill and may still be challenged in the House of Lords.

The aim of the new law was to put the responsibility for proper control of banking systems and bank employees firmly on the shoulders of bank executives, thus making it their direct responsibility if later wrong-doing was uncovered in their institution.

It would have meant that prosecutors could have had little difficulty in deciding who was responsible for failing to prevent the crimes taking place.

The proposed new law said managers should be held to account for all rule-breaking by their employees - and they would only escape punishment if they proved they had done all they could to stop it.

You may recall the background to this new law, which was the evidence of massive criminality in the banking sector which was given to a Parliamentary Committee, but for which no employee or executive could be found to be liable for its commission.

As a result, the Tory Government, under David Cameron and George Osborne determined, to pass legislation which would remedy that lacuna in the law. There was much talk of concern, and being seen to be tough on the causes of financial crime. Cameron and Osborne needed to be seen to be standing tall and talking tough on City crime at that time, because the impacts of the policies of austerity were beginning to be felt very hard across the country.

But the law, passed by MPs in 2013, is now being repealed just weeks before it was due to come into force in March.

The City institutions and their weasel-worded PR agencies have been quietly lobbying Government, saying how unfair it would be if the burden of proof of innocence was forced on to the shoulders of those accused of the wrong-doing.

There has been a lot of blather talked about ‘natural justice’, The Bill of Rights, ‘Magna Carta’, and any number of other arguments that well-heeled City lawyers can be paid even more money to identify.

But none of it amounts to a row of beans.

The new law stated that managers should be held to account for all rule-breaking by their employees - and would only escape punishment if they proved they had done all they could to stop it.

In other words, instead of allowing senior bankers to wash their hands of all responsibility for the wrong-doing carried on by their employees, wrong-doing which was contributing in no small way to the bottom line of the bank’s profits, and thereby, to the bonuses of the directors, the law would have required them to prove what they did to ensure that wrong-doing could not be carried out.

You might not think that this was too onerous a requirement, after all, it is inherent in their role as directors, and is part of the fiduciary duties of care that they owe the bank and its shareholders as directors, so they would only have been required to prove what they should otherwise have been doing anyway.

But in the Alice in Wonderland world of the City of London and its banking class, such burdens were felt to be unfair to the overpaid Mafiosi who run our banks. It was argued this was requiring the bankers to prove their own innocence, a feature as many well-heeled and well-fatted QCs opined was contrary to English Common law.

Well, not really, since 1953, anyone found carrying an offensive weapon has been required to prove that he had it with him for a lawful purpose. But this law was designed to deal with oiks and yobs and the lower orders without the law, so no-one gave a toss that they were being required to prove their own innocence.

But when it comes to bankers and the untouchable protected species, different rules must be seen to apply.

So, Instead of bank bosses having to prove they did enough to stop rule-breaking, the regulators will now have to prove they did not.

That will shift the 'burden of proof' from bankers themselves to organisations like the Financial Conduct Authority, making it more expensive to pursue high-salaried bosses.

Lib Dem Baroness Kramer accused "outrageous" George Osborne of "buckling to pressure from his friends in the banks" - and warned it could allow bosses to turn a blind eye to another LIBOR rate-rigging scandal.

 "People are no longer talking about the banks so the Tories think they can go easy on them’ she said.

"The government claims the rule will make it hard to hire good people. They've obviously been in conversation with the banks to come up with statements like that."

Of course, why didn’t we think of that ourselves?. ‘Good people’ ie, previously experienced criminal bankers will know about the new law so may be wary of putting themselves in harm’s way.

Of course, keeping dodgy bankers out of the top jobs might be thought to be a very good thing, but again, not in the world of the City and Canary Wharf!

The Tories have clearly quickly forgotten their much vaunted promises about going after the guilty men and making sure that the City of London is a clean place to do business in.

Susan Kramer again;

"It is as if they have already forgotten about the 2008 crash, Libor fixing or any one of the other scandals that cost the taxpayer billions. 

"Senior managers in our banks should not be allowed to wash their hands of failings. Ignorance is not an excuse when our economy and British livelihoods are on the line."

This is the mendacioius Tory politicians all over, and Baroness Kramer is right, but sadly, her views will not carry much weight in the City or in the Carlton Club. The Tories know on which side of their bread to spread the butter, and that will only come from their friends in the financial sector who want to be able to bring as much dirty money into this country as possible, but without having to demonstrate any personal responsibility for its handling.

This is why I say that we cannot trust this Government to tell us the truth on their dealing with banking crime. They are making too much money out of its commission. Oh they will huff and puff when it is necessary so to do, and they will say all the right things to get their lickspittle friends in the media to write them good headlines when they need them, but then, when the hue and cry has died down, they will quietly renege on their public agreements and simply not carry out their agreed promises.

This is why I say they are complicit in the commission of banking crime. They know only too well what their shiny suited friends in the City are capable of doing, and by repealing important aspects of much trumpeted laws, even before they have been given a chance to work in practice, they are conspiring with the City Mafias to commit even more crime.

The usual Civil Service bromides have been trotted out to justify this appalling breach of faith.

A Treasury spokesman said: "The government has taken concerted action to improve conduct across the banking sector and deal with the abuses and unacceptable behaviour of the past.

"We've introduced the toughest rules on bankers’ pay of any major financial centre, and hardwired responsibility and accountability into the financial system, with those senior managers responsible for bringing down banks facing up to seven years in prison.

(Well, these rules have already been watered down to such an extent that they are illusory and will never be promulgated).

"We are extending the Senior Managers & Certification regime so that tough standards of personal responsibility and accountability apply beyond banking and across the entire financial services industry.

"This will ensure that all financial services firms in Britain operate to the highest standards."

And if you believe this pile of 24 carat tosh, you will believe anything!

George Osborne and David Cameron have just sent their banking friends the clearest message that it is ‘business as usual’. 

So fill your boots boys, because this government ain’t gonna come after you!