Banditry

My bankster buddy Dan has an excellent post on Crooked Timber about how the venal British middle class are basically blaming the disaster they created, caused and voted for, on the small subset of the venal British middle class who are actually bankers – rather than on their own stupid and venal decisions. If you disagree, you’re either actually poor, in which case man the guillotines and wise up to the fact that when Mrs Thatcher and her ideological successors fucked the unions, which meant “everyone who works for a wage”, or you’re blaming the bankers for the fact that you’re a venal twat yourself.

Yorkshire Alex’s comment is the best take on the 2000s ever:

In the UK and Ireland, and as far as I know elsewhere, the property boom was an era of absolutely repellent, piggish greed that was actually open to you! It was a culture of speculation that was participatory and all the uglier for it. All sorts of people got the opportunity to behave like caricature bankers, right down to the horrible politics, and they did.

In other news, people who think that Blairy-Browny-Labour was a left-wing party are still mentally ill.

As far as I can make out with reference to the Grauniad/Barclays tax evasion dossier:

1) Barclays has done nothing illegal
2) Barclays hasn’t receieved any aid from the UK taxpayer.

…so this isn’t an issue.

Should Barclays request aid from the UK taxpayer at any point, its activities should, obviously, be taken into account when deciding how much of a haircut its shareholders deserve to be given. But at the moment, it’s trying to stop the UK taxpayer from making it take ‘aid’, which is kind-of the opposite…