Hot from posting the story of how corrupt and fraudulent RBS' s
conduct was - and for all we know still is - comes this gem.
The very idea that Gordon Brown's friends in the Scottish banks are
put in charge of detecting fraud is so bizarre that it must be true
with Brown rubbing his hands in glee that he's getting away with it
again .
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SPECTATOR 11.3.09
Politics
FRASER NELSON
Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics
There are Soviet-era leaders who would have killed for the power that
Mr Brown now wields. He has the scope now to announce the mother of
all pre-election tax cuts - knowing that the Bank of England and the
undead banks are programmed to gobble up as much government debt as
he can issue. How very convenient. First the taxpayer is forced to
bail out the banks, then the banks duly bail out Mr Brown's
government. And they leave that nice Mr Cameron with the bill.
It is easy enough to deal with a bank asking if you are a member of
an organised political party (especially if you say 'No, I'm a
Liberal Democrat'). A kindly lady from the RBS sales team called me
back and assured me that it didn't really matter if I were a mere
party member. The fraud risk, apparently, concerns only the highest
officers of political parties - such as ministers. Here I can fully
understand their concern. The terrifying fact is that Gordon Brown
and his colleagues are now in charge of most of the British banking
sector, and they have only just started to play with it.
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The worlds of banking and politics have collided, and there is
plenty of evidence to suggest that we have just witnessed what the
financiers call a reverse takeover. The money flows suggest that it
is not the taxpayers owning the banks, but the banks who own the
taxpayers. Their losses are now our problem. As John Redwood puts it,
Britain has become a mammoth bank attached to a struggling medium-
sized government. And this, lest we forget, is what David Cameron
will inherit.
Mr Brown is - quite literally - not counting the bank debt which he
has hung around the neck of taxpayers. He has taken the extraordinary
step of rejecting the official national debt measurement and ordering
his own one. Banks, meanwhile, have been ordered to protect jobs in
politically sensitive parts of the country (HBOS) or overcharge
customers in order to repay the government loan (Northern Rock). And
crucially, the nation's savings can now be used to prop up the
government simply by obliging banks to buy UK government debt. This
is what is even more worryingly Stalinist than impertinent questions
about politics.
Where once British banks scoured the planet to find the best
investments, they have now become mysteriously converted to the case
for UK government gilts - becoming net buyers last month for the
first time in a decade. Foreign buyers, meanwhile, have all piled out
- which would have triggered a funding crisis if so many British
banks had not been suddenly filled with the patriotic spirit. Then we
must consider the Bank of England's extraordinary plan to create £150
billion by simply printing money. Most, it says, will be spent on
government debt.
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