If you are new to this blog, you are invited to read first “The Largest Heist in History” which was accepted as evidence and published by the British Parliament, House of Commons, Treasury Committee.

"It is typically characterised by strong, compelling, logic. I loosely use the term 'pyramid selling' to describe the activities of the City but you explain in crystal clear terms why this is so." commented Dr Vincent Cable MP to the author.

This blog demonstrates that:

- the financial system was turned into a pyramid scheme in a technical, legal sense (not just proverbial);

- the current crisis was easily predictable (without any benefit of hindsight) by any competent financier, i.e. with rudimentary knowledge of mathematics, hence avoidable.

It is up to readers to draw their own conclusions. Whether this crisis is a result of a conspiracy to defraud taxpayers, or a massive negligence, or it is just a misfortune, or maybe a Swedish count, Axel Oxenstierna, was right when he said to his son in the 17th century: "Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?".

Friday 28 June 2013

Sir Mervyn King comment on prosecuting bankers


On the 19th June 2013, the Governor of the BoE, Sir Mervyn King in his Mansion House speech confirmed that the bankers must have been prosecuted under the exiting law and regulations. He said that the "firms that pose a risk to taxpayers [i.e. the financial institutions], cannot be prosecuted because of their systemic importance" (sic) and are "too big to fail, too big to jail" (sic) (at 18:38 of the Bloomberg recording). I.e. he clearly implied - and from the Governor of the BoE it is as direct statement as it can conceivably be made - that the bankers would have normally been prosecuted under the existing laws, but the structural arrangements which defy the spirit and the letter of the existing law seemingly preclude this. And this cannot be accepted: such reasons are clearly against the public interest and undermine the public trust in the justice system. Is it the case that there are small people that can be easily prosecuted and there are those who can conspicuously break the law, make themselves fabulously rich, bankrupt the country, turn lives of millions into complete misery and do all that with impunity accepted by the government? This appeared to be a message of Sir Mervyn about the government handling of the financial mess.

The founding article of this blog, "The largest heist in history", proposed over four years ago:

"In a normal free market economy a business that fails should be allowed to collapse. If a business is a giant pyramid scheme, like the current financial system, it must be allowed to collapse and its executives and operators should face prosecution. After all running pyramid schemes is illegal." Sir Mervyn: at long last, welcome to the club!

Therefore is the government going to move forward and start prosecuting those who caused the current financial mess? Legally there is no problem to do so: creating financial pyramids is a very serious crime. Bankers committed very serious crimes, which - from technical standpoint - were very trivial (and it is even more trivial to prove this). This has been discussed on this blog since early 2009. Or maybe Sir Mervyn was talking nonsense?

It would be helpful if the government made a public statement on Sir Mervyn's comments. They were definitely not lighthearted jokes.

When the author of this blog started talking about the prosecution of those who caused the current crisis more than four years ago it was considered by the mainstream as eccentric and not worth an attention. Now the "Old Lady of Threadneedle Street" sings the same tune. Or one might try to generalise and say that, sadly, there is nothing ridiculous that can be said now about the current state of world affairs that after sometime turns up to be glaringly obvious.

It is also encouraging that the mainstream starts slowly catching up with something that has been glaringly obvious for more than four years ago. Although the mainstream media journalists have still a long way to go: but they will eventually get there kicking and screaming. They are also as part of the financial mess story as bankers and politicians, not just reporting on it.

Friday 21 June 2013

Greg Pytel: Mainstream catching up


I can only recommend "This week" on BBC 1. The beginning of the programme is about the banking industry behaviour. Nothing new, in fact a very old news, but it is nice to note that the mainstream is catching up with things that have been glaringly obvious for over four years and have been discussed in detail on this blog for years. Still the mainstream has a long way to go and a lot to understand.

Why so late? What is so difficult about this crisis that it takes so many years for the mainstream commentators to understand? This seems to be a more challenging subject to study (psychology, media studies, study of transparency and corruption, etc.) than studying the causes of the current financial mess, as the latter have been obvious and clear all along. The mainstream media handling of the financial mess since 2008 is a very interesting story and a research subject in itself.

PS. The founding article of this blog "The largest heist in history" is recommended in a recent book by Paul Knott "Ouch! What you don't know about money and why it matters (more than you think)" (page 26), published by Pearson (owner/co-owner of the Financial Times and The Economist).