The banks' reverse takeover of Britain

Rhoda Klapp

And that's why I have called many times for the shares in the banks I own to be distributed to all of us. Worst case, they are worthless. Best case, one day they will be worth having. Up to then, we will have the voting rights, not HMG. We can run it on a commercial basis, not bully it into doing what the govt wants. Or we can sell our shares for whatever they will fetch. And the nation owns the banks, and if necessary their debt, directly, avoiding the massive distortions of policy the curreny system involves.

Mitch

The scariest part is that only 28 million people are employed and are liable for all that money.
We really are being farmed for our money.When did we change from being subjects of the crown to slaves of the banking system?

Gruntson

Sounds a bit like the Labour Government - Gordo's massive brain with a small struggling Cabinet attached to it.

How will it unravel though?

Bob

This country has been looted, wholesale. Fraud on a scale never seen in human history. One of the benefits of globalisation.

The markets are in a descending triangle and if the chartists are right about a fifth wave down (normally the worst) then it should be an interesting couple of weeks. That is 'interesting' in a Chinese sense.

oldtimer

Your reverse takeover idea is as interesting as it is alarming. It need not occur provided there is a sufficiently clear minded, and brutal, group put in charge of matters at the organisation put in charge of the taxpayers shareholdings in the banks.

They are key, partly as a buffer between banks and politicians, but also as ruthless owners. Nothing else will do. A job for some private equity types? It is certainly not a job for the wee timorous beastie.

In the wider scheme of things, the crisis we are in will provide an opportunity for ruthless reform in a number of areas - provided the next government has (a) the ideas (b) the will and (c) the people to carry them through. Banking reform is an obvious candidate, to add to schools and welfare reform. There are others about which we have, effectively, heard nothing. I would put tax reform at the head of the list. At least there is the accummulated evidence of some very useful studies on business, employment and taxation on which to draw. This will be essential to spark the wealth creation needed to get us out of the current mess.

TomTom

Dear Fraser, LBO is what Germany did when it acquired the GDR from Honecker, Krenz et al. West Germany became saddled with a giant HBOS and the golden years of the Bonn Republic gave way to the Mezzogiorno Politics of the Berlin Republic.

Britain has carried Scotland for decades and now the Scottish banks and defunct demutualised building societies have copied the US S&L disaster of the 1980s on a global scale. This modern Darien Scheme has swallowed the UK GDP rather as the first instance destroyed Scotland and led to the Act of Union 1707.

It is clear that Britain is going to be a Zombie State lumbering across the stage laden with a real burden of debt and suffering instability in politics and society. The nature of the New Politics can be seen in Putin's Russia - the Nomenklatura - that is Politicians plus Bankopoly - will become increasingly authoritarian as paramilitary police keep the restive public under control.

Mitch

"Gordo's massive brain"

a joke surely! he is Adrian Mole, he has read loads of books and owns an anglepoise lamp but clever? nope just another liar with an ego problem.

Thomas Young

It seems that the banks have been scouring the world for crooks and fraudsters in order to create a new generation of oligarchs. In the absence of natural resources, they've just handed over our money on Gordon's say so. The only difference between Brown and Yeltsin is that Brown did it while he was sober.

Gannet

During WW2 the government took out the pay packet forced lending as "Post War Credits" to be repaid immediately after the war. By the time they were repaid a generation later they were almost worthless, not being inflation proofed, and many of holders had died taking their credits with them. Just wait for a similar wheeze to be proposed, "We must all make sacrifices" etc. Oh lordie, how many times have I been told that one?

Augustus

the word 'banker' has become synonymous with scallywag. Drivers will soon be using it on the street: 'F***ing banker!'
they will yell to a car that cuts them off.

TomTom

When the Government moved on the banks forcibly recapitalising them it suspended not only the Competition Code in context of HBOS but also the Takeover Code to allow it to go above 29.9% stake in banks without triggering the requirement to make an open offer for all the shares.

If it subsequently takes over banks like RBS and Lloyds it would have drive a coach and horses through any regulation of mergers activity and any rights for shareholders in British registered companies.

It could end up collapsing both the Stock Market and the Pension Funds and Unit Trusts thereby bringing down the insurers too.

Pity Brown never took a course on monetary economics and financial institutions and instead had Shriti Vadera and a cast of clowns to advise but not warn

Chris Rose

The nationalization of the banks is unnecessary and reckless. It is foolish squandering of taxpayers' money, undertaken without giving sufficient thought to other courses of action and without independent scrutiny.

Northern Rock was nationalized simply to save Labour's skin in the North. Now nationalization seems to be proceeding for fear of having to admit that the action on Northern Rock was an error.

This is decision making in a mad house.

Herbert Thornton

Good God - instead of our being hosts to the blood-sucking Gordon Brown and the rest of company of parasites, our new Great Parasites are going to be the Banks?

If we think the bonuses that the bankers have been awarding themselves have been excessive, just imagine the bonuses they will be awarding themselves from now. The mind boggles.

frank goddard

As I said earlier the banks will get rid of this goverment!!!
AN EXCELLENT TIME FOR AN ELECTION........NOW MR BROWN!!!

Frank G..pensioner

MWiley

Interesting article--Gordon has a lot of difficult questions to answer.However,could anyone supply me with the name of ONE Conservative backbencher or member of the Shadow Cabinet who raised any doubts about the behaviour of British banks between, say 2000 and early 2007? I remember a lot of comments about excessive GOVERNMENT spending and borrowing but nothing on the private sectors recklessness let alone criticism of City bonuses.Vince Cable seems a voice in the wilderness from those years.Could you help us out on these far sighted Tory MPs Fraser? I would be very interested to know who they are and when they made their comments.

TGF UKIP

Yeah yeah, Fraser, but all these expressions of indignation are getting increasingly pointless.

The point is what comes next given the ever increasing spending and debt mountain.

On Marr this morning we had Cable making no bones about the ballooning deficit making it necessary "to shrink the state," langauage entirely missing when your flyweight best mate appeared on the Politics Show.

The best he could venture was "we have come off Labour's spending plans." However, the extent to which he has "come off Labour's spending plans" was revealed in his January Marr interview when he spelled it out. Instead of increasing spending from £620 bn this year to £650bn next year, as Gordon plans, he would increase it to just £645bn!

Is there any wonder that when asked - David Cameron heavyweight or lightweight politician Joe Public consistently answers 20% -57%.

And that's without making any mention of the silly crap he came out with on bonuses (and why is it only bank bonuses, what about FSA, Treasury and other civil service bonuses.?)

Fraser Nelson

MWiley, this is one of the questions we'll be looking at with our investigation into the recession. But from the top of my head: John Redwood.And, em, that's it.

TGF, point taken - see my later blog on ConHome's spending report.

seb

Fraser

Your article mentions two trillion pounds of liabilities on RBS's books. Could you explain this? Does this mean that RBS has on its books two trillion pounds of worthless loans and mortgages that will have to be written off? Banks do not, in good times, have liabilities on this scale. They are supposed to have cash and cash-convertible assets.

Pete

I hear all this talk about 'nationlisation', and weep, have we all forgotten, it does not work.ever.
History is supposed to teach us the errors of our ways, and yet Brown continues to blunder down these blind alleys. I'll bet his Stalanistic hands are all aquiver ,with the thought of them on the levers of all this financial power. Thank God
he is a busted flush.

Atlas Shrugged

So why has it taken you so long to have worked that little one out?

This country has been OWNED by its very own international banking system, since the so called Glorious Revolution. Some might have a good case for arguing since the English civil-war.

Therefore one could say, nothing has really changed much.

This county is a BANK and we its people are its stock, when not also being its cannon fodder. That used to be known as The British Empire, The Company, or The Firm, later known as the British Commonwealth. Now known as The New World Order.

Herbert Thornton

Somebody just sent us some quotations from Thomas Jefferson.

They're all very far-seeing, but the last one about Banks (referring to private Banks)now seems to applies just as much to government owned Banks - especially with Gordon Brown (our own version of Robert Mugabe) heading the government.

And Cameron will be no better.

Here they are -

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. - Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. - Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. - Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. - Thomas Jefferson

And in 1802:

Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

dearieme

Ah, Jefferson. I'm always amused to be lectured on liberty by a man who owned his concubine and the children he had by her.

Herbert Thornton

dearieme -

When Martha, Jefferson's first wife, died, Jefferson inherited all her property and under the unfortunate state of the law at that time that included Sally. It is generally accepted that Sally was also Martha's half sister, because they had the same father, John Wayles.

In an age when a very substantial proportions of the women in Britain and even in the U.S. aren't married to the men they live with either, your calling Sally Hammings a "concubine" is an out of date sneer.

There was obviously a great deal more to Jefferson's relationship with Sally than you imply. To try to so glibly dismiss one of the greatest statesmen of his time demonstrates prejudice and ignorance.

William Whitey The Third

It'll be allrighty