Accounting loopholes used by bankers to 'inflate profits' (and their bonuses)!

Following on from my recent post about the locusts, leeches and vultures in our society (i.e. financial services companies and lawyers) a report has been published today by the Adam Smith Institute showing how banks (the locusts) use outdated/flawed accounting rules to fictitiously boost profits in order to maximise their bonuses.

The report highlights how technically insolvent banks are using IRFS accounting rule annomalies to report massive profits by using expectations of future values when calculating/reporting profits ... to make it look as if they are not insolvent and to make it look as if the bankers are making lots of money (in order to boost their own individual bonuses).  Yet many of these assets, contrary to increasing in value can easily, and in fact do (as we have seen!), become worthless.
  

The report highlights how the 'financial engineering' going on in banks is no more than a legalized scam/ponzi scheme (e.g. Credit Default Swaps) and how it's effectively fraud (which compliments/augments the legalized counterfeiting they also undertake)! It also highlights how politicians and regulators are doing nothing to tackle the anomalies in the accounting procedures to stop them from doing this in the future.  

The report also exposes how the ratings systems not only allow, but positively support, them making up and using 'fraudulent' financial vehicles to fictitiously drive up profits (by giving scam 'products' triple AAA ratings),  whilst making it very difficult for hard-working small/medium enterprises to get a loan (due to not giving them triple AAA ratings and/or no rating at all). This makes it easy, and much more lucrative, for banks to 'manufacture profits' from 'financial products' (or 'vehicles'), rather than generate profit by lending money to an enterprise working hard to manufacture 'real products' (e.g. real 'vehicles')!

So what are the Government doing? ... Well rather than tackling the problem at its source (e.g. by starting to address the flawed rules/systems that allow such scams to go on), they have instead said they are going to set a little bit of taxpayers money aside (i.e. your money!) for small/medium businesses (whipppeee)! ... and at the same time they are preparing for the next bank bailout - which will occur when the value of all these fictitious financially engineered products actually prove to be worthless (and when the current commodity boom they are currently pushing also goes bust). With 'ring-fencing' effectively put into the long grass by politicians*, nothing of any substance will have been implemented to protect the taxpayer before the next collapse (currently being driven by the bankers).

The end result ... mega-rich bankers/speculators ... bankrupt nations/taxpayers. 

The process ... legalized fraud, robbery and counterfeiting ... endorsed by corrupt politicians and law makers (n.b. lobby groups such the CBI also lobby heavily on behalf of banks, claiming they are the 'Voice of Business', when due to the vast amounts of money given to them by the banks, they are really the 'Voice of Banks').

In China such people would be tried for economic sabotage ... and, if guilty, hanged ...

So when will people in the Western World realize what is happening and start to demand action ... a couple more years perhaps? ... when the next bailout is required?

Well, whatever the timescale, the bankers are clearly looking to make hay while the sun shines (i.e. taking a shedload of your future wages - i.e. the taxes they will take from you in the future to pay for previous/future bailouts) ... whilst the politicians/lawyers try to put up barriers, blow up bridges, and get their lifeboats ready ... so when people do finally realise what's actually been going on they won't be able to reach them ... or their corrupt bank friends!

* David Cameron has put plans for any ring-fencing at least 5-10 years away, and he also put aside our national interests last week when trying to protect his banking friends in the City from any regulatory changes taking place in Europe.

Hypocrisy, corruption and the 'battle' ahead

Bankers have profited greatly from trading/gambling with other people's money and creating, packaging & trading 'dishonest' & 'socially worthless' financial products. The bankers were also closely aided & abetted by an incompetent & corrupt government - who proactively relaxed the rules so that bankers could act more recklessly and gamble using ordinary people's money (so they could build short term 'economic growth' upon it).

They allowed banks to integrate traditional high street banking with banking focused upon trading/investing securities (through the removal of previous barriers put in place following the last great depression). The Government also adopted a laissez-faire approach to the types of products & securities created/traded, whilst they also talked up (and profited from) the housing market (e.g. do you remember all the flipping of MP's second homes?) and allowed self-certification/120% mortgages to be introduced. Yet the Gordon Brown keeps telling us our crisis was caused by America!

As all the gambles of the corrupt bankers started to fail, and all the toxic assets created by them became clear, the Government bailed them out with tax-payers money, to reduce the risk of such banks collapsing and to avoid millions of ordinary people (i.e. voters!) losing their savings. The rest is history, and will arguably condemn the UK to history for generations to come - as an indebted and devalued nation, struggling with spiraling debt, unemployment and an ever increasing tax burden (targeted mainly at the hard-working middle class - as the rich pay huge sums of money to avoid any paying any tax at all).

Government leaders have ignored the fundamental issue (e.g. the integration of 'gambling' with 'traditional' banking) and have failed to solve the problem. To me their explanations for not doing so are clear - denial, self interest and greed - and the bankers are once again paying themselves massive bonuses, buoyed up by taxpayers money given to them in bails outs (which will have to be paid back through increased taxes, for instance covering the toxic assets left over from the bail-out of Northern Rock), and due to the Bank of England 'printing money' (QE) only for them to use it to start a spiral of gambling once again (rather than lending it to otherwise viable businesses)! Spin counts for little, action counts for a lot ... and this Government has done lots of the former but very little of the latter. It has largely ignored the advice of the Governor of the Bank of England, and the head of the Financial Services Authority too!

In China 'economic sabotage' is a major crime which warrants the death sentence, yet here in the UK no bankers have been challenged, arrested or had their assets seized! In fact we have seen quite the reverse - as they once again receive billions of pounds in bonuses as they rebuild their 'house of cards' with tax payers money. The few heads of banks who left office and were made the 'scape-goats' of this corrupt industry also left with massive payoffs and pensions too (Sir Fred Goodwin, RBS).

Bankers, supported by the politicians, have enacted 'economic sabotage' on the UK, yet none of them face criminal charges (never mind the 'death sentence') or have had any of their 'assets seized' (n.b. yet most of their wealth could be classified as 'assets from crime'). Gordon Brown likes to create the illusion of talking tough, but has done nothing to address the sabotage and daylight robbery that has taken place*. One might think this is something to do with the pressures of sorting out the economy, but this could not be further from the truth. The Government has been looking to extend the "Proceeds of Crime Act' (an act brought in to deal with 'organized crime' and to seize assets) ... but it has not focused on those seeking to 'profit' from the nation whilst creating 'economic sabotage' ... and our hypocritical & corrupt leaders in their 'wisdom' have decided to quietly (and underhandedly) use it to give more power to Councils to seize assets from 'minor offenders' instead!

Hypocrisy, corruption and double standards ... and whilst such people continue to be in power 'economic sabotage' will continue to go unchecked, with laws designed to protect them & allow them to pillage, and more laws introduced to stop & punish ordinary people for any minor misdemeanor (e.g. late paying a parking fine) ... nb even the Police Federation has raised concerns about this! However a great many politicians entering Parliament are a part of the lucrative & thriving legal profession, and are there to serve their own self-interest, as well as the existing justice system and political system (and all the bankers & landowners who 'bankroll' them).

More people need to 'wake up', 'take a look' and 'smell' what's 'all around them' ... and as they do, and they take responsibility for changing things, unrest will start to grow and the 'battle' of the future will begin ... a 'battle of values' ... and a new form of 'politics' and 'economics' will emerge ...

'For evil to flourish, all it needs is for good men to do nothing' [Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797]