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FISK: Bankers are the the dictators of the West

ruggedtoast
ruggedtoast Posts: 9,819 Forumite
in Debate House Prices & the Economy
Hard hitting, no nonsense copy here from Fisk. He is not afraid to tackle these issues head on.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-bankers-are-the-dictators-of-the-west-6275084.html
The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.

I didn't need Charles Ferguson's Inside Job on BBC2 this week – though it helped – to teach me that the ratings agencies and the US banks are interchangeable, that their personnel move seamlessly between agency, bank and US government. The ratings lads (almost always lads, of course) who AAA-rated sub-prime loans and derivatives in America are now – via their poisonous influence on the markets – clawing down the people of Europe by threatening to lower or withdraw the very same ratings from European nations which they lavished upon criminals before the financial crash in the US. I believe that understatement tends to win arguments. But, forgive me, who are these creatures whose ratings agencies now put more fear into the French than Rommel did in 1940?

Comments

  • nearlynew
    nearlynew Posts: 3,800 Forumite
    The author must have been reading my posts on here.
    "The problem with quotes on the internet is that you never know whether they are genuine or not" -
    Albert Einstein
  • ruggedtoast
    ruggedtoast Posts: 9,819 Forumite
    Fisk is a hard read, he's remorseless in his judgements, yet he is rarely wrong. He usually reserves his ire for Western foreign policy, if he has the banks in his sights he thinks something serious is going on.
  • nearlynew
    nearlynew Posts: 3,800 Forumite
    ruggedtoast wrote: »
    Fisk is a hard read, he's remorseless in his judgements, yet he is rarely wrong. He usually reserves his ire for Western foreign policy, if he has the banks in his sights he thinks something serious is going on.


    He has just realised they are lying f*cking thieves, maybe.
    "The problem with quotes on the internet is that you never know whether they are genuine or not" -
    Albert Einstein
  • Dan:_4
    Dan:_4 Posts: 3,795 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    nearlynew wrote: »
    He has just realised they are lying f*cking thieves, maybe.

    evening nearly, you alright fella?
  • nearlynew
    nearlynew Posts: 3,800 Forumite
    Dan: wrote: »
    evening nearly, you alright fella?


    Yes mate.

    And you?
    "The problem with quotes on the internet is that you never know whether they are genuine or not" -
    Albert Einstein
  • Dan:_4
    Dan:_4 Posts: 3,795 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    nearlynew wrote: »
    Yes mate.

    And you?

    I will be Friday lunchtime mate when I start 2 weeks off work :)
  • nearlynew
    nearlynew Posts: 3,800 Forumite
    Dan: wrote: »
    I will be Friday lunchtime mate when I start 2 weeks off work :)

    Nice one.

    Have a good christmas.
    "The problem with quotes on the internet is that you never know whether they are genuine or not" -
    Albert Einstein
  • Mr_Mumble
    Mr_Mumble Posts: 1,758 Forumite
    Really now, the useful idiot who believed the Iraqi information minister? The guy who has an Internet meme named after him for his inaccuracies?

    'Bankers' (whoever they are now - rating agency staff?) couldn't hope for 'better' enemies.
    "The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." -- Frederic Bastiat, 1848.
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