The wrecking of Barclays is organised looting by those at the very top

[marmar]

The wrecking of Barclays is organised looting by those at the very top
The way Barclays has been debased to enrich a few hundred of its elite employees is also the story of Britain in recent decades

Aditya Chakrabortty
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 July 2012


You'd have learned precious little from watching Bob Diamond in parliament last week – apart, that is, from his love for his former employer. If pressed, you or I might admit to tolerating our jobs, to getting on with colleagues or, at the very least, to taking full advantage of the company stationery supplies. For the multimillionaire banker, however, this would be mere watery equivocation. The firm that had forced him out just the day before was "an amazing place", packed with "wonderful people". And, he told MPs over and over: "I love Barclays."

Sadly, no one asked the obvious follow-up: if that's how you treat organisations you admire, what on earth becomes of the ones you dislike? Because since arriving in 1996, Diamond has debased what was a venerable, Quaker-founded high-street institution into something else entirely: a financially precarious outfit with a reputation for dodging taxes and fixing interest rates.

This transformation hasn't helped the Treasury, which is now forced to chase the bank for taxes. It has harmed credit-starved firms, because Barclays now sticks them at the back of the queue for loans. It is even bad for your pension fund, since the company's insecure finances means it no longer makes good returns for shareholders. In fact, the biggest winners from the metamorphosis of Barclays have been Diamond and his investment bankers who – even this year, amid global financial turmoil – took home multimillion-pound bonuses.

If this were a tale involving just a single boutique bank, you could chalk it up as a dreadful shame. But the story of how one of Britain's biggest businesses has effectively been wrecked largely to enrich a few hundred of its elite employees is so much bigger than that. Not just in scale, but also for the larger picture it suggests of what has happened in Britain over the past few decades: how the people at the top of some of our biggest businesses have used their positions to extract money, rather than earn it, and how politicians and regulators have connived at this organised looting. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/09/wrecking-of-barclays-organised-looting

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[mother earth]

2. With the immensity of these crimes, you have to wonder, when is it all going to just crash?

At one point I thought it was the beginning of the demise of the US, now it's seemingly the demise of global economics.
This crime has gone global and where is justice or accountability?

[magical thyme]

3. sickening...

The BarCap trading arm generated just over half of the company's pre-tax income but it also carries £1.8tn in gross credit risk more than the UK's entire annual income.

[alittlelark]

4. I've been screaming this since 2005...

it was/is organized and deliberate.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

5. Conspiracy theory?

No. Not to those paying attention. We are in the midst of the biggest heist (worldwide) in history.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. See what else they planned, 40 years ago: Operation Northwoods

Chilling!

[DCKit]

7. Corporate Psychopaths. nt

[RainDog]

8. k&r n/t