Original article via Socialist Worker (UK):
Disgraced banker Fred Goodwin is going to keep his £16 million pension, despite some bluster from elements of the Labour government.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Even though it's on the other side of the pond, bankster frauds are getting away with millions of pounds. What's more, it's a Labour government who's turning a blind eye, all the while the British people are expected to pay for the bailout. Hmmm...sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) boss’s reward for leading the company to near collapse is just the tip of the iceberg of New Labour’s slavish devotion to the bankers.
Labour...pardon, New Labour is ostensibly the party of the working class in England. However, like a certain party in the US which is the rough equivalent, they threw their lot in with the banksters and the bosses in embracing neo-liberalism. Needless to say, their economy is crashing and may even be worse off then our own.
Lord Myners, Gordon Brown’s City minister, gave the go ahead for the pension of £693,000 a year. He didn’t realise it was an obscene amount of money.
The Pound Sterling is trading at $1.4031 today. Let's see...if the computer's math is right that's $972,348.30 per year. Hmmm. Not to bad a haul for a politico, eh?
Myners was chair of the Guardian Media Group and Land Securities Group, Europe’s largest property developer. He gave £12,700 to Brown’s leadership campaign in 2007. Brown appointed Myners as chair of the Low Pay Commission.
Myners was also a director of GLG, a hedge fund that speculated massively on the collapse of the Bradford & Bingley bank. The government then bailed out the bank.
Ah...that explains it. Even down to the hedge fund management. When will we all learn? Once we're out trillions of dollars, maybe.
No one knows how much public money will be given to the banks, because no one knows how much money they owe.
That's true for both sides of the Atlantic. We don't know how much we're going into hock in a chance to save the bankster frauds' backsides. And we're expected to accept it without question.
Read the rest of the article. It's actually pretty good, save for the bile that builds while your reading it. And, I guess, feel better about our situation in that the rest of the world is screwed, too. Well, I'm not sure about feeling better about that. The article does have a good suggestion at the end:
We shouldn’t be paying some banker’s pension. We shouldn’t be paying any of them at all. They should be paying back the money they have stolen from us. They should all be sacked and the banks should be run in the interests of the people.
Hear, hear!