How corrupt are the banks, finance, business etc?

Sovereign · **#21** by **Sovereign** » Feb 24, 2014 5:35 pm

I've read something similar before as to why the Fed should be dismantled. That's not my area of expertise but I'm not how accurate the thesis is.

Clive Durdle · **#22** by **Clive Durdle** » Feb 25, 2014 4:40 pm

Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time
Ratings: (23)|Views: 52,587|Likes: 208
Published by Sherritty
Carroll Quigley, Georgetown University history professor (deceased), in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966, made this claim:

\"There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret record.

\"In addition to these pragmatic goals, the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world\'s central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups.\'\'

pp. 950 and 324

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4047296/Carro ... n-Our-Time

Clive Durdle · **#23** by **Clive Durdle** » Feb 25, 2014 4:44 pm

And this link discusses how the chemical industry is actually writing the law in its favour.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/02 ... icals.html

Clive Durdle · **#24** by **Clive Durdle** » Feb 25, 2014 4:49 pm

duplicate

Calilasseia · **#25** by **Calilasseia** » Feb 25, 2014 6:01 pm

Meanwhile ... here's something for the American posters here to ponder:

How the banks screwed you and got away with it

Calilasseia · **#26** by **Calilasseia** » Feb 25, 2014 6:49 pm

Blackadder wrote:I am in complete agreement that the lobbying industry in the US is used by global corporations to subvert the political process. It is a national disgrace. But not all businesses are global corporations. Not all bank employees are fat cats raping the system for personal gain.

There are millions of people around the world running small or medium size businesses. I am one of those. We provide jobs, we don't bribe politicians, we pay our taxes and we take all reasonable steps to minimise waste and pollution. We could no have achieved any of this without support and money from our banks.

I don't think anyone here is complaining about the people like you on the lower tiers of the pyramid. It's the entitlement-riddled few at the top we're complaining about. Who, incidentally, have been caught out shitting on people like you. For example, RBS and its infamous "Global Restructuring Group", which has been caught red-handed loading entirely synthetic "fees" upon small and medium sized businesses, with the deliberate intent of pushing those businesses into bankruptcy, so that the bank could seize the assets thereof on the cheap. See more on this here.

Now if you've been fortunate enough to escape this sort of predatory attention, then all well and good, but many haven't. Let's not forget that RBS engaged in this duplicitous practice, whilst under majority public ownership. In short, RBS is majority owned by the British public, and therefore, in theory at least, should be serving the interests of that public, who are now its majority shareholders. Yet instead, the senior command in this organisation seemed to think that they were entitled to take the public's money to bail them out of the shit they got themselves into, then flip the bird to the same public that rescued them, by continuing to behave like robber barons. It's this sort of conduct that leads to the opprobrium you see being directed toward the bankers. If Libor, mis-sold swaps and PPI weren't bad enough, we now have the spectacle of a publicly owned bank shitting on small businesses, and driving solvent concerns to the wall, in order to boost the bank's own bottom line and the bonuses of its C-suite.

Blackadder wrote:It fucking pisses me off when we are dismissed as some kind of evil, corrupt blight on society.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I reserve my invective for the people way above you. Such as those I've just expounded upon above, who, I shall repeat, are shitting on people like you too.

Blackadder wrote:Especially when it is done with the deliberation of a child booing a pantomime villain.

Once again, I refer you to the above.

Blackadder wrote:We risk our homes, our families, security and work sometimes for years with little to show for it, in the hope of creating something successful and not having to join those same global corporations for a life of forelock tugging drudgery.

One of the reasons why, when I was "invited" (read, one step short of coerced) by various DWP types to go into business, I told them that I wasn't equipped for this.

Blackadder wrote:So when you have stood in my shoes for a couple of years, then come and tell me how corrupt I am.

I for one am aware of the fact that if anything, people like you are more likely to be victims of corruption by the big boys, than perpertrators thereof,

Blackadder wrote:Until then, you can shove your thoughts up your arse.

I suspect you won't be inviting me to do the same.

Blackadder · **#27** by **Blackadder** » Feb 26, 2014 8:53 am

Calilasseia wrote:
Blackadder wrote:I am in complete agreement that the lobbying industry in the US is used by global corporations to subvert the political process. It is a national disgrace. But not all businesses are global corporations. Not all bank employees are fat cats raping the system for personal gain.

There are millions of people around the world running small or medium size businesses. I am one of those. We provide jobs, we don't bribe politicians, we pay our taxes and we take all reasonable steps to minimise waste and pollution. We could no have achieved any of this without support and money from our banks.

I don't think anyone here is complaining about the people like you on the lower tiers of the pyramid. It's the entitlement-riddled few at the top we're complaining about. Who, incidentally, have been caught out shitting on people like you. For example, RBS and its infamous "Global Restructuring Group", which has been caught red-handed loading entirely synthetic "fees" upon small and medium sized businesses, with the deliberate intent of pushing those businesses into bankruptcy, so that the bank could seize the assets thereof on the cheap. See more on this here.

Now if you've been fortunate enough to escape this sort of predatory attention, then all well and good, but many haven't. Let's not forget that RBS engaged in this duplicitous practice, whilst under majority public ownership. In short, RBS is majority owned by the British public, and therefore, in theory at least, should be serving the interests of that public, who are now its majority shareholders. Yet instead, the senior command in this organisation seemed to think that they were entitled to take the public's money to bail them out of the shit they got themselves into, then flip the bird to the same public that rescued them, by continuing to behave like robber barons. It's this sort of conduct that leads to the opprobrium you see being directed toward the bankers. If Libor, mis-sold swaps and PPI weren't bad enough, we now have the spectacle of a publicly owned bank shitting on small businesses, and driving solvent concerns to the wall, in order to boost the bank's own bottom line and the bonuses of its C-suite.

Blackadder wrote:It fucking pisses me off when we are dismissed as some kind of evil, corrupt blight on society.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I reserve my invective for the people way above you. Such as those I've just expounded upon above, who, I shall repeat, are shitting on people like you too.

Blackadder wrote:Especially when it is done with the deliberation of a child booing a pantomime villain.

Once again, I refer you to the above.

Blackadder wrote:We risk our homes, our families, security and work sometimes for years with little to show for it, in the hope of creating something successful and not having to join those same global corporations for a life of forelock tugging drudgery.

One of the reasons why, when I was "invited" (read, one step short of coerced) by various DWP types to go into business, I told them that I wasn't equipped for this.

Blackadder wrote:So when you have stood in my shoes for a couple of years, then come and tell me how corrupt I am.

I for one am aware of the fact that if anything, people like you are more likely to be victims of corruption by the big boys, than perpertrators thereof,

Blackadder wrote:Until then, you can shove your thoughts up your arse.

I suspect you won't be inviting me to do the same.

No I won't, because your post is somewhat more balanced and considered than the title of this thread.

You may be interested to know that our business used to bank with RBS. Until the day that we received a letter demanding immediate repayment of our overdraft, without any warning or discussion beforehand. Our business banker didn't return our calls and his staff told us that our account had simply been closed down and passed to the Debt Recovery Department. This despite us never having exceeded our borrowing limit, never having breached any of the bank's terms and conditions and having provided regular updates to our business banker on the company's progress. In the end the bank called in the personal guarantees of the three owners (including myself) and we are now paying RBS in monthly instalments. This arrangement has effectively trashed our personal credit ratings so the chances of any of us ever getting a credit card or mortgage in the near future are fucked. The closure of our business's current account without warning almost killed the business overnight. Fortunately we were able to open a new account at HSBC, who have been great. We couldn't get a new overdraft facility but at least we were able to keep trading.

We have an non-exec chairman, who is a retired director and a member of various panels of business advisors to small businesses. One of these panels had a meeting with Vince Cable to discuss the plight of small businesses during the recession and our case was passed directly to Cable, who told the meeting that he had literally hundreds of files of complaints about the tactics of RBS. He was apoplectic about the fact that they were behaving like robber barons, and were owned by the State and yet he, the Business Secretary, could not touch them as they were the property of the Treasury and their mandarins.

So yes, I know all about RBS. They most certainly did shit on me and I am still paying the price for being a customer of theirs.

Sovereign · **#28** by **Sovereign** » Feb 26, 2014 3:43 pm

That brings up a good question. As a small business owner, how do you find a reputable bank that won't pull what RBS did? Or is it impossible to tell until they screw you over?

Blackadder · **#29** by **Blackadder** » Feb 26, 2014 5:54 pm

Sovereign wrote:That brings up a good question. As a small business owner, how do you find a reputable bank that won't pull what RBS did? Or is it impossible to tell until they screw you over?

It's a bit of a lottery TBH. I know other business owners who have had bad experiences with other banks. But RBS seems to have specialised in twattish behaviour since it was bailed out by us taxpayers. Heads should roll there.

Clive Durdle · **#30** by **Clive Durdle** » Feb 27, 2014 8:14 am

No I won't, because your post is somewhat more balanced and considered than the title of this thread.

I am very confused. What is unbalanced about a question? Especially when reading around the subject there is a problem here Houston, one you have personally experienced.

Blackadder · **#31** by **Blackadder** » Feb 27, 2014 9:42 am

Clive Durdle wrote:

No I won't, because your post is somewhat more balanced and considered than the title of this thread.

I am very confused. What is unbalanced about a question? Especially when reading around the subject there is a problem here Houston, one you have personally experienced.

I took exception to the "business etc" part of the title. For reasons I have already explained.

Clive Durdle · **#32** by **Clive Durdle** » Feb 27, 2014 9:50 am

And General Electric, Exxon, Google, Amazon, Monsanto, Dow are?

Ihavenofingerprints · **#33** by **Ihavenofingerprints** » Feb 27, 2014 12:51 pm

People driven by short term profit can be lead to do unethical things. That's why governments need to be strong and quick to act when implementing fair trade, consumer protection and environmental protection policies.

Don't forget that a lot of good people work for major banks/oil corporations, and they strongly believe their company can positively contribute to the total sum of human progress. Sadly their work is often offset by the rare but damaging actions of psychopaths within the system.

igorfrankensteen · **#34** by **igorfrankensteen** » Feb 27, 2014 1:31 pm

If you look at lists of current legal actions against banks etc, on insurance, libor, trading etc, you get the impression that oh it is only a problem of some bad apples.

But is that the case? Are not these examples symptoms of a system issue?

What of externalities? How much CO2 production are these organisations financing? What polluting industries are they financing?

Has anyone measured the whole set of inefficiencies and unnecessary complexities of which corruption is but one symptom?

I can see why Blackadder felt attacked, though I do think that has more to do with his being over-sensitized before this thread was launched (understandably). Whenever economies go south, a lot of people start pointing fingers at anyone who seems to be still okay, much like accusations of witchcraft against healthy people in times of plague.

I too am suspicious of the special attention accorded to CO2 production, as though the threadstarter wants to blame global warming on anyone who participates in capitalist business.

As to what I think might be good questions to ask (at least how I would like to reinterpret them to fit my own pet peeves):

here in the US, I have seen during my lifetime, a curious situation develop in our society, wherein a host of apparently unrelated movements, concerns, social movements, and traditional pressures, have all been actively manipulated by various powerful people, so as to enrich a few, at the expense of the larger society.

I'm not even REMOTELY suggesting a grand secret conspiracy a-la Bilderburgers and so forth. To the contrary, I am convinced that the History of human nefariousness would best be described as "a conspiracy of disunited opportunism."

Here in the US, I have seen one idealistic movement after another, be nudged and corralled like cattle to market, in ways that poison the original ideals, and instead serve to enrich and empower the few, very often to the direct detriment of the people who most earnestly and energetically defend the people they perceive to be their champions.

THAT'S corruption on a grand scale.

Honest capitalists have been persuaded to fight against anyone who suggests that working class people should have a say in how their labor is valued, even as the oppression of laborers serves to reduce those very same capitalists ability to compete fairly. Here in the US, health care costs, among other things, have made the cost of labor excessive as compared to elsewhere, but the people who have the most to benefit from reducing those costs, and therefore their ability to compete with the rest of the world, have been deluded into thinking that anything that is done to reduce the burden of health care, is an attack on that very competitiveness.

The single greatest force supporting corruption here, is the fundamental corruption of basic human ideals themselves. Ironically, the movement for individual freedom and opposition to the oppression of things like religion, spawned a generation of people who have promoted the idea that "if it makes money, it's good and wholesome; if it doesn't, or is costs money, then it's bad." The direct results of this idea, include things such as that pollution should ONLY be reduced, if it can be done in a profitable way; that keeping a workforce healthy and happy, should ONLY be done in ways that bring high profits; and worst of all, that unless someone is tried and convicted of a crime, ANYTHING they do is to be considered moral and just and fair, even admirable.

THAT is corruption.

Blackadder · **#35** by **Blackadder** » Feb 27, 2014 5:12 pm

Clive Durdle wrote:And General Electric, Exxon, Google, Amazon, Monsanto, Dow are?

That's like me asking how much of a prick are people called Clive, because I know a few Clives who are pricks. You might feel a little aggrieved at being included in an indiscriminate swipe such as that. If you fail to understand this, then I doubt there is much more I have to say in this topic.

Clive Durdle · **#36** by **Clive Durdle** » Feb 28, 2014 3:17 pm

I do fail to understand it!

As a child in 1950s Johannesburg, Stanley Cohen saw from his bedroom window the old Zulu man employed as a "Night Watch Boy" huddled over his charcoal fire, rubbing his hands together to keep warm. Why, the child wondered as he slipped between his grandmother's flannel sheets, brought from Poland, did the old man have to sit out there? "Why had our family (and everyone like us) been allocated black men and women (who were called 'boys' and 'girls' or just 'natives') as domestic servants? Where were their wives, husbands and children?" As he lay under his cosy eiderdown, Cohen began the thought process that led to this troubling book.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/a ... y.politics

Maybe this will help

In Eradicating Ecocide: laws and governance to prevent the destruction of our planet, international environment lawyer and barrister Polly Higgins sets out to demonstrate how ‘compromise’ laws have caused the problem and why we can destroy the Earth without consequence. The solution offered is to create a law of Ecocide, the 5th Crime Against Peace. Such a law will hold to account heads of corporate bodies as well as other ‘natural persons’ in positions of superior responsibility.
The opportunity to implement this law represents a crossroads in the fate of humanity; Higgins argues that we can accept this one change and in doing so govern our Earth for future generations, or we can continue to destroy it, risking future wars over disappearing resources. Eradicating Ecocide is a crash course on what laws work, what doesn’t and was the 2011 winner of the People’s Book Prize for non-fiction.

http://eradicatingecocide.com/books/

We are all compromised in various ways. But there are ways out, maybe we all need some form of truth commission, but without attributing guilt - he who is without sin cast the first stone? But some will have to make recompense - restorative justice?

How corrupt are the banks, finance, business etc?

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