'Reckless bankers are to be jailed', one went, with the usual ad nauseum throughout the day. "A fish rots from the head", was the proverbial analogy that a newly appointed head of an NHS department observed as he did the rounds of the UK media. The one about the rotting fish wasn't to do with banking, but I thought it would be just as appropriate if it were.
The UK Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards wants senior bankers to take more responsibility for their actions. They call for a new criminal offence to deal with "reckless conduct in the management of a bank," with automatic prison sentences for guilty bankers.
click here
This, is where the other headline accords - (the one about the fish rotting from the head). The whole thing does seem a bit fishy - if you pardon the cheap pun. However, am I to understand from this brilliant piece of parliamentary deliberation that, when the next economic collapse comes we can expect to see some top bankers banged up?
Really? I wonder what they mean by senior bankers. Would it be those of the echelon that assume the right to dictate terms and conditions of our living standards to our legislature - now that they've bought that said legislature with the fiat money they've screwed out of the rest of us? Am I to understand that the very same clique of bankers who told Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to pay up, by wringing it out of his hoi polloi in the blood, sweat and tears of austerity, or go to hell in an empty ouzo bottle.
Now I know what they mean when they say we should, 'talk with the organ grinder, not his monkeys'. The whole system is rotten from the head down. The underlings that head the High Street banks are only doing what they have to do to succeed. Maybe they are a bit sociopathic; you don't get a nickname like Fred the Shred by having a reputation for saving drowning puppies all day long. They're careerists. What would anyone expect?
Going back to the fish analogy, not that I've studied the anatomy of fish, but that stratum of bankers are by no means the rotting head. I have to confess that when I saw them all sitting in a row, like the 'three crows that sat upon a wall' in the old Scots ditty, whilst the parliamentary committee pontificated at them as if the banking morass had nothing to do with their political incompetence, I actually felt sorry for them.
Not a lot - just a bit. And to use another expression made famous/infamous by parliamentary committee, which incidentally, might've had something to do with the death of a whistle blowing scientist, I thought at the time that they really were just "chaff".
It's the system that stinks - like rotting fish. Yes, they were complicit in a debacle that will ultimately destroy our living standards, deny us our democracy, our freedom from debt and our children's futures, but that particular echelon of banksters aren't the root cause. If they hadn't done the bidding of the world's banking aristocracy, others would've accepted the honour gladly.
Look over here! Don't look at what they're doing over there in the shadows. That's what shell games are all about - and there's nothing like a good old-fashioned lynching to distract the masses. While we're all vilifying and now perhaps jailing Fred the Shred's future ilk the debt based fractional reserve scam continues unabated. The media doesn't even mention it. I bet it didn't even get a mention in the so-called Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
I suggest that there should be a Parliamentary Commission for Standards in Parliamentary Commissions. All these public enquiries they have are a joke - at the public's expense. Isn't it time they passed an act of parliament to deal with "Reckless Conduct" in the Management of Political Behaviour.
And how might that work? Well, they could start by looking at all the deregulating that went on in the 80s and 90s. It's "reckless" to repeal acts of parliament that previous generations in their wisdom enacted to counter what, after all is just typical human behaviour - especially the sort of behaviour they should expect from the sort of people who are, by nature, attracted to power and wealth. It's "reckless" to throw up one's hands in resignation when democracy itself is attacked by a criminal cartel, hell-bent on world domination by acquiring all the real wealth, (as opposed to fiat currency soon to be nullified by inflation) and leaving everyone else with not a pot-to-p*ss-in. On the other hand, to collude with such people is corrupt.
Corrupt behaviour is different from "reckless behaviour". It's much worse. If you drive recklessly into someone and cause injury, you're stupid, selfish and shouldn't expect much acclaim (unless it's a banker); if you drive maliciously into someone and try to blame your victim for his or her injuries, you're wicked - to say the least.
Well, as expected, the usual bankster apologists on mainstream media are warning us of the indispensability of the banking profession whilst now, the politicians whom once were in awe (and, no doubt, in hock) of them, have at last joined the rest of the human race and are calling that bluff. The politicians, it seems, are no longer afraid to challenge the power of the bankers - just as long as they're not too far up the social strata.
A few heads might roll in future banking crises (of which, I'm sure there'll be many) - but I suspect that no rotting heads of fish are likely to feel the wrath of our audacious parliamentary representation, any time soon.
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