The Financial System's Rotten Heart

By Carl Bloice

Source: Black CommentatorSunday, July 15, 2012

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-financial-systems-rotten-heart-by-carl-bloice

"The Conservative Party head of the British government, Prime Minister David Cameron,
condemned the "spivvy and probably illegal" activity of Barclays and other banks involved in fixing interest rates. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, (treasury secretary) George Osborne, called the Barclays affair "symptomatic of a financial system that elevated greed above all" and "brought economy to its knees." Andrew Rawnsley, the Observer newspaper's chief political commentator, wrote about "the moral cesspit of the City" (what we call Wall Street), which he said should make the case "for radical reform of how we do capitalism," adding that the country's bankers are "greedy, reckless and incompetent" and "shameless" and that "they fleece their customers" and as a result "our whole society has been warped." Financial Times associate editor, John Gapper, wrote that the UK is plagued by "a set of too-big-to-fail investment banks in which amoral behavior is deeply embedded." The paper derided what it called "the rotten heart of the financial system" engaged in "nothing less than a long-running confidence trick played on the public for personal and institutional advantage," adding, "This was market-rigging on a grand scale. It is hard to think of anything more damning - or more corrosive of the reputation of capitalism." The editors of the Guardian thundered "our own society - and economy - have been warped and corrupted" by the banks' behavior.".......

....."Clearly, some of the biggest figures in the legions of the 1 percent have moved in a big way beyond making money the old fashioned way and have instead turned to looting.

"Austerity has redrawn the boundaries," wrote Philip Stephens, associate editor and chief political commentator at the Financial Times. "The cost of the financial crash was borne by the hard-working classes. Now it turns out that the banks who were gambling with taxpayers' money were also selling them fraudulent insurance policies. Tax cheating by the wealthy is now recognized as imposing an added burden on everyone else."

"One by one, institutions that people once depended on - banks, parliament, police, press - have been exposed as, if not legally corrupt, then rotten with greed," wrote Guardian columnist, Jonathan Freedland, last Saturday. "Football fans are learning that even their beloved teams are not immune:
Manchester United supporters despaired this week as they saw their club move towards a flotation on the New York Stock Exchange, in an effort to pay back a chunk of the £423m debt that the Glazer family loaded on to United when they bought it seven years ago."......