The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Rhymes With Canker

Gordon's little Darling and two of his chums have been doing the accountability thing in front of the Treasury select committee. They admitted that there had been mistakes in regulating the banks (or, in Standard English, not regulating the banks) and said that lessons had to be learned. Gordon's little Darling is not expecting many bonuses to be paid next year; but then, Gordon's little Darling probably did not expect the economy to seize up this year, otherwise even he might have felt moved to take preventive measures. The governor of the Bank of England said that the money which has been thrown at the banks as a reward for their prudence and foresight is "an investment in the banking system that will eventually pay off" for somebody; and Gordon's little Darling said that the taxpayer would be first in line for any dividends paid on whatever earnings the banks can scrape together, minus whatever the Government chooses to spend on airports, identity cards and private companies specialising in data loss, and any unexpected City bonuses. The money, said the governor of the Bank of England, was "not to protect the banks but to protect the economy from the banks"; therefore taxpayers can sleep easy in the knowledge that their wealth has been used for the worthy aim of protecting an abstraction from an institution. Whether the population can be protected from the abstraction is clearly not a matter for concern.

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