Controlling our future - Banks have become too powerful

IN the last year or so virtually every bank CEO and chairman in the country resigned in ignominy.

They were kicked out of positions of huge power and influence because they presided over the greatest destruction of wealth in the history of this State.

Most of them, despite abject betrayals, left with eye-watering golden handshakes and pensions.

So great is the power of the banks that in virtually every instance these greed-fuelled oligarchs were replaced by individuals shaped in the same institution’s gene pool. It was a case of Carry On Banking; insiders succeeded deposed bosses and the golden circle remained unbroken.

That scandal stands in stark contrast to the fact that, last year, one person was sent to jail virtually every day because they could not, or would not, repay monies borrowed from banks.

While these individuals were in jail the banks’ survival depended on a State bailout. In all 306 people were jailed at great cost to — you guessed it — taxpayers. Those sentences are no more than a warning administered by the State on behalf of the banks. Why? Because when these 306 people finished their sentences they were still liable for their debts.

Most certainly some of those jailed deserved to be but it is hard to believe the majority would not have met their obligations if given a chance to restructure their affairs rather than go to jail.

In that time not one banker has been even arrested.

It should be pointed out too that none of these cases involved any of the estimated 25,000 mortgage holders who, for reasons not unconnected with reckless banking, find themselves in arrears. Are the banks going to press that some of those 25,000 homeowners be jailed?

These corporations have become far more powerful than is good for democracy. They have gone too far beyond the reach of Government supervision.

At the moment great protests are being threatened to protect privileged positions. How much more sensible it would be if the protests focussed on the real villains of the piece and demand that Government appoint regulators who regulate; that Government prepare legislation that would carry real sanctions for wild west bankers and that the tail no longer wags the dog.