Bankers used to synonymous with boring. They used to be the most dull people on the high street, and by dull mean dependable, stolid, trustworthy. The most uptight, emotionally constipated and risk averse character in Dad's Army was a bank manager. The writers gave him that job, presumably, as a short-cut to understanding his character. We all knew how humdrum and uninspiring a man in that position could be. Should be.
Well, what a difference a day makes. The day in question was the 27th of October 1986, the Big Bang, the day on which everything changed. That day ushered in the deregulation of the markets, the light touch regulation, or the no regulation at all. From then on, debt was good and bonuses were introduced to inspire the worker ants in the City to get us all into more of it. On that day, the entire financial industry took a giant dose of laxatives and they were constipated no more. The floodgates opened, so to speak.
Now the trust we accord a banker is on a par with a loitering oik in an alley. They are both liable to cause you harm but at least you know where you are with a street mugger, and they can only take what you have on you at the time.
The latest wheeze, one that the authorities knew about at least three years ago and have only now been pushed into acting upon, is fixing the Libor. This word is pronounced Lie-bore, or it is in my house. It perfectly encapsulates the modern approach to customer relations within the banking community: lie to them and bore them to death. Smile and tell the marks what they want to hear - that whatever deceit it is that you are selling is good for them and bury the bad news in print so small you'd need an electron microscope to see it. And even if you could see it, you wouldn't understand it, so don't bother trying. Just trust us, they say. We're on your side. Helpful banking and all that.
Just as the press have staged a coup by co-opting the political class into doing the bidding of their billionaire owners by threatening them with the big stick of ruinous publicity, so the banks have enacted an altogether more hushed grab for power with the carrot of fresh, delicious money. They rain it all over the politicians who might otherwise impede their goal, which appears to be to amass all the money in the world in their own completely safe and tax efficient bank accounts. And if that causes the rest of us to fail, well, so much the better - nothing underlines your own success like the failure of everybody else.
Any problem with regulation, with the authorities or the law, has been smoothed over with a carpet of high denomination bills. It is a deep shag pile that puts people in office, keeps them there and secures their retirement when they step down or are pushed by the electorate. It's amazing what giant amounts of money can do to persuade people in power to act in the best interests of those doling it out. A supplicated governing class has been employed to doing the bidding of the financial sector.
Armed with this security shield, the banks embarked on an orgy of venal acquisitiveness. As with the latest scandal, the excuse given by the banks is usually that everyone else was doing it, so why shouldn't we? If this sounds like the reason a five year old might give for stealing sweets in a newsagents, it's because it is. They appear to live in the consequence free environment of a well tended child. And they have the same moral approach to dealing with what is not theirs: I want it! You can't have it! It's mine!
The Inter Bank Lying Rate and the Payment for no Protection Insurance have been joined in the hall of shame by the Interest Swap Rate Arrangements that have caused so many already struggling businesses to sink further, or drown altogether. Banks treated their customers as does a man on the street asking you to find the lady in a three card trick - like mug punters. The banks pushed these fiendishly complicated schemes in order to make more money. Here's a question: HOW MUCH MONEY DO THESE PEOPLE NEED?
And they call it "mis-selling". What a benign and mild term that is. If I stage an armed bank robbery, would I be guilty of mis-taking?
This is all in addition to engineering so many commodity bubbles that have caused everything to become so expensive and the small matter of the ruination of the whole wide world, with the possible exception of Monaco, where they retire to toast themselves and celebrate how very bloody clever they have been.
Punishment? One bank said it's punishment for joining in the feeding frenzy on it's customers would not be "material". I think that's called adding insult to injury. Barclay's was fined £290m, most of it by the American authorities. That seems like quite a large sum. It would change my life quite considerably but that giant won't feel it at all. They made twenty times that much in pure profit last year. And that was slow year. They probably spent as much on the compensation gifted to the geniuses who run the place and dreamed all this stuff up, of which I am sure we know only a fraction. For them, money well spent, I'd say.