All that it takes for evil to flourish….

…is for good men to do nothing

(Pretty much the same thing happens when bad men do nothing as well)

Here’s a couple of tunes from great Antipodean bands of the 1980s for the senior management of Barclays to enjoy in their early retirement…

Dragon – Speak no Evil

Crowded House – Mansion in the Slums

So then, our politicians must now try and sort out this mess… Oh dear, why do I have this sickening feeling nothing is about to change…

Lack of moral environment

This may have little to do with the environment but – I’m sorry – I simply cannot remain silent any longer about the revelation that the financial services industry in London is almost unbelievably corrupt. We are watching history being made here; this is bigger than the Olympics – and I think it will take the City of London decades to recover its reputation (if it ever can). It may be the CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, that has hit the headlines, but this scandal is set to envelop at least 20 banks; and I think there will be very few that will not eventually be tainted by it.

I stayed up late last night to watch two weekly current affairs programmes on the BBC, Question Time and This Week. The first question on the former set the tone for the evening: “Is there any integrity left in British Banking?”… The panel – including the CEO of brokering firm Tullett Prebon – were unanimous in their condemnation of Barclays; and every single one of them called for Bob Diamond to resign.

However, despite the unanimous view that he should resign (or be fired), a view clearly shared by the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron, most people seem to think he will not go, simply because so many other banks are being investigated for the same thing; manipulation of the LIBOR – the interest rate banks use to lend each other money and/or make huge bets on future performance of equities. The fractions of a percentage involved are miniscule; but the sums of money involved are huge. This is indicative of the way in which the financial services sector is completely detached from reality; some of the trades involved sums of money in excess of the annual economic output of the entire planet.

Put simply, this money does not exist; and yet it has corrupted many of those involved. I therefore think the award for the soundbite of the evening must go to Michael Portillo, a former Conservative Minister in the Thatcher government, who said on This Week last night that (I paraphrase):

“If Pakistani cricketers can get sent to jail for match fixing, surely these traders should be sent to jail for what they have done…?”

Like I said at the start of this rant, I think it will take the City of London decades to recover its reputation (if it ever can); and I am very worried that no-one will ever be sent to jail for what they have done. However, I really hope action will be taken; and I hope that our politicians will stop trying to score political points against each other. This is no time for the present Coalition government to blame the previous Labour administration for light touch regulation. This kind of hypocrisy is almost as contemptible as the amoral behaviour of the bankers involved. How does the analogy go… “Before you try to take a splinter out of the eye of your fellow-man, remove the plank from your own!” The main reason we are in this financial mess is due to the action of another coalition – that between Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s – which allowed the ‘Big Bang’ de-regulation of the financial services sector in London in 1986. This was the message of the movie Inside Job.

Barclays shares lost 16% of their value yesterday; but this is much bigger than Barclays. This scandal exposes the fact that our entire banking system is utterly corrupted; and rotten to the core. As many of the contributors to last night’s programme suggested, the high-street banks should now be separated from the investment banks. However, I do not think the Augean Stables can ever be cleaned-up; it needs to raised to the ground and completely re-built.

So, what, if anything, has this to do with the environment? A great deal, I suspect, because a very large proportion of humanity has very clearly taken its collective eye off the ball… I will close with the wise words of a Native American leader and poet:

When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted…
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

See http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/white-mans-folly/