The banker testified about the mortgage loan given to Jerome Daly, but then Daly cross-examined the banker about the creating of money ‘out of thin air’, and the banker admitted that this was standard banking practice. When Justice Mahoney heard the banker testify that he could ‘create money out of thin air’, Mahoney said, ‘It sounds like fraud to me.’ educationcentre200 online
We economic hitmen really have been responsible for creating this first truly global empire. And we work many different ways. But perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organisations. But the money never actually goes to the country. Instead it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country, power plants, industrial parks, ports, things that benefit a few rich people in that country in addition to our corporations ... The whole country is left holding a huge debt; such a big debt it can’t be paid, and that’s part of the plan. John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman & economist for Chas T Main Inc
Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign aid organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM. ibid.
Support for tax to curb bonuses: The boss of the UK’s Financial Services Watchdog says he would be happy to consider the use of a new tax on banks to prevent excessive bonus payments ... A nice sensible revenue source for funding global goods. BBC online feature article 27th August 2009, ‘The Turner Report’
It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind. William E B Du Bois
Wall Street used these panic tactics to get us to pass this $700,000,000 bill ... They said the market would drop 700 points, blood would flow in the streets and lions would be devouring children in the parks of Los Angeles. Congressman Brad Sherman, interview Alex Jones Show
The English Bangladesh Trust Ltd: he [John Stonehouse] also invested heavily himself and spent the next nine months cajoling businesses to provide further backing. But then just as the Bank was about to offer its shares to the general public the Sunday Times published a highly critical article about the way the bank was being established. So he pledged even more money himself ... The Bangladeshi community in Britain pledged no more than fifteen thousand pounds. Vanishings: The Disappearance of John Stonehouse
What you saw here at the bank was recklessness, over confidence, lack of investment in infrastructure, no checks and balances; it was all a very nasty cocktail. Maarten van Eden, Chief Financial Officer, Anglo Irish Bank 2010-2011, interview ibid.
Anglo is the baddest bank on the planet is what they say. Anglo is the main culprit in this drama. ibid.
Richi Rich has raised eyebrows – even by the standards of Britain’s obscenely paid money men with news that he pocketed £44 million last year that made him the country’s No 1 fatcat banker. The Daily Mirror 12th March 2011
A new golden age for the city of London. Gordon Brown, 2007
Whatever the City wants it gets. Michael Meacher
A symbiosis of interest between the politicians and the big financiers. Michael Meacher
Sir Fred Goodwin: knight of the realm for services for banking was the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland when it ran up the biggest corporate loss in British history: a loss of £24.1 billion. RBS: Inside the Bank that Ran Out of Money, BBC 2011
The most toxic bank in Britain. ibid.
Fred was the rising star of Scottish banking. ibid.
RBS now had access to the huge vault of Nat West savings and deposits ... They bought another insurance company, a credit card operation in Germany and a second hand car franchise. ibid.
By 2005 Fred’s RBS had acquired twenty-five assorted businesses. ibid.
Greenwich Capital made money out of mortgages ... RBS/ Greenwich Capital moved up the league table of mortgage traders. ibid.
Fred Goodwin announced the biggest banking takeover in history: the target was a Dutch bank, one of Europe’s largest, called ABN-AMRO. ibid.
Northern Rock experienced the first run on a bank in the UK for nearly one hundred and fifty years. The markets went into turmoil. Shortly afterwards and to its dismay RBS was finally able to discover just what ABN/AMRO had on its books. It was not good news. It contained exposure to hundreds of millions of pounds of subprime related investment which were turning toxic. RBS could reassure the City no longer. ibid.
RBS investments: they had been sliced, diced and finally trashed. ibid.
As the losses mounted RBS did ask shareholders for help. RBS was running out of money. More heavy losses came in the spring. ibid.
RBS came within two hours of running out of money. ibid.
For over two hundred years London’s financial districts made Britain one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Ian Hislop, When Bankers Were Good, BBC 2011
Their reputation has fallen behind that of estate agents. ibid.
David Barclay was one of a new breed of financiers at the start of a century in which banking helped Britain build the richest empire in the world. ibid.
This was the age in which bankers were good. ibid.
Samuel Gurney was a banker with three brothers ... They were Quakers ... One brother worried in his diary: ‘It is a very serious thing to be so largely engaged in the cares and transactions of money matters’. ibid.
He felt banking was his religious duty ... The Gurneys gave away substantial sums. ibid.
Elizabeth Fry – Samuels’ big sister – was a Gurney. ibid.
Ebenezer Scrooge is only the most famous of a host of morally dubious financiers in nineteenth-century fiction. ibid.
Peabody gave away his money ... Peabody declared his aim was ‘to amaeliorate the condition of the poor and needy of London’. ibid.
When the first Peabody dwellings opened in 1864 they must have seemed like paradise on Earth. ibid.
Angela Burdett-Coutts ... She was free to turn philanthropy into a career ... Angela Burdett-Coutts sacrificed the majority of her wealth for love. ibid.
Philanthropy was now becoming fashionable. ibid.
Nathanial Rothschild ... He provided new cottages and free medical treatment for his estate employees in Tring. ibid.
In a troubled economy where bankers have become panto villains, arch enemies of the people, can they continue to pocket a king’s ransom in bonuses? Jeff Randall, What is a Banker Really Worth? Sky News 2012
RBS ... The wholesale exit of professional investors. ibid.
Ministers rushed to the rescue, but why? ibid.
How many have the flexibility simply to walk out rather than cough up? ibid.
It was precisely that so-called innovation in financial sophistry that brought the system crashing down. ibid.
Those taxes on bonuses were very welcome. ibid.
So what’s a banker really worth? In my view, a little more than what the baying mob thinks, but much less than many of those bankers receive. ibid.
The net social contribution is negative. Carroll Williams
They have no track record of supporting anything that’s usefully productive. Carroll Williams
We will resist the calls that have been made for direct regulation of executive pay. Kitty Ussher, Economic Treasury Secretary
Ben Bernanke [Federal Reserve] felt the risk to the system, the financial system as a whole, would be too great if Bear Stearns were allowed to go bankrupt. Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times