Blog 46

I'm sorry, but am I missing something here. Didn't the US government bail out the banks by giving them in excess of one thousand billion dollars? So what's all this about Barack Obama creating a tax to 'claw-back' ninety billion dollars? Wasn't the intention at the time that the banks would have to pay back the full amount they were 'lent'?

Now most people know how companies deal with tax hikes, they increase the cost of their products and services, so the actual cost of the new 'claw-back tax' on the banks will inevitably be passed on to the public.

As far as I can deduce, the claw-back tax is just the latest smokescreen designed to hoodwink a gullible public into thinking that some sort of banking reform is taking place. Like the amount of publicity given to the tax on bank executive bonuses, in reality the gross amount of all the bonuses paid out in the last five years is an insignificant amount compared to the amount the financial services sector has ‘creamed’ out of the system in order to fuel their gigantic money-go-round.

I think many people will agree that a reform to the fundamental working of the banking system is long overdue; world finance is too important to be left to the banks and private enterprise. By their actions over the last hundred years or so the banks have clearly shown they cannot be trusted with such an important task. [Please don’t think for an instant that the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England or most so-called central banks are owned by any government].

A bank, as was the original intention, should be no more than a money warehouse that provides a distribution center for transferring visible funds between account holders. All other services are anti-social and should be dismantled. It's high time banks took their rightful place in society as the lowly warehousemen the are. [No disrespect to all other warehousemen in the world]

With the inauguration of Barack Obama I had high hopes that the US would lead the way with some drastic reforms to the whole financial services sector, spearheaded by fundamental changes to curb the anti-social antics of the banks. Instead we have a president who is tap dancing on the fence, balancing the wrath of the public by feeding them with highly disguised, spin-doctored tidbits against the enormous power [and wrath] of the financial institutions.

I will say it once again just for the record; since the beginning of time there's not a single financial services institution or bank in the world that has ever created a single cent of real wealth. [I'm not talking about money here].

That abused privilege goes to the billions of people who produce the things virtually everyone judges their wealth by and of course the billions of people who assist them in this laudable task.

All the remaining millions of people who create zero wealth are simply parasites living upon an already overburdened social system.