Friday, February 27, 2009

Sacrificial Fat Cat ?

In medieval days Fred Goodwin might have been hung, drawn and quartered, in modern China he - and the board who approved his termination package - might have got a bullet in the back of the neck.

Today - and for weeks to come - he'll have to listen to a lot of hot air from HMG and their allies. And that'll be about it. The chances of the money being retrieved are near zero. He'll get away with it because he can.

It may seem to me and thee amazing that RBS could have approved such a deal - with Freed shovelling RBS cash out of the back door even as HMG prepared to pump the stuff in through the front door - but we forget the cosy cartel by which everyone sits on everyone else's remuneration committees, a mechanism which has been driving up top directors pay by 15% a year for the last 20 years. Don't stop the back-scrathing, lest your back be unscratched when the time comes. Didn't Merril Lynch approve a slew of last-minute bonuses even as insolvency loomed ?

But the Government hope he'll serve his purpose - as a lightning-conductor for public disquiet while yet more taxpayer cash is thrown at RBS on easy terms. If he didn't exist they'd have to invent him.

UPDATE - Jeff Randall, one day later :

If the inappropriately named Goodwin did not exist, the Government's Department of Propaganda would need to invent him. By casting Sir Fred as the pantomime villain – the credit crunch's Dick Dastardly – the unholy trinity of Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Lord Mandelson has been able to deflect attention from Labour's calamitous stewardship.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Myners gave it the nod apparently, but then that scum was a former partner of hedge fund parasites GLG Partners. Bankster stooge gov't, that's the top and bottom of it.

They could have sacked "away tae to fuxk I wilnae give ma pension back" - but Broon and Darling "didnae" - as expected.

If this maggot had turned up at an ET, what could he possibly ssaid in his defence?

No, Tyburn tree must be made fruitful once again. The reason we had so little treason in the past was that potential traitors knew what would bloody well happen to them - the hurdle, hanging, drawing and quartering.

The destruction of a nation's economy is treason

God I hate liberals and I hope to see a great many of them hanged

Anonymous said...

Laban

Can you please delete my comment (comment No.2).

My anger is getting the better of me.

Who knows what is illegal these days and I wouldn't fancy a visit from the Stasi.

Anonymous said...

I fely very naive when I saw a blogger suggest that deals such as this may amount to little more than the payment of "hush money".

Anonymous said...

We must remember that banks need to pay out like this. Otherwise they wont attract the top flight people they need to compete.

Pay is directly related to performance etc etc.

Scum.

String em up.

Anonymous said...

What is the difference between what Goodwin did and what Bernie Madoff did?
Both made a series of moves with no realistic chance of being able to payback what they owed.
You could say Madoff did it intentionally, but Goodwin paid 10bn for another bank at the top of the market, wtf was he thinking? how many backhanders went on?

Ultimately Brown and Blair must get the blame, they created the bubble or at least had a hand in creating it along with the Americans, and when these bankers had made so much money during that boom it was hard for anyone to question what they were doing as things came to a head.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone notice the terms RBS got under the Govt's asset protection scheme?

No? Then Goodwin has served his purpose.

Anonymous said...

"What is the difference between what Goodwin did and what Bernie Madoff did?"

More to the point, in my opinion, what is the difference between what Goodwin has done and what our self appointed Prime Minister has done? It's just a matter of scale.

Goodwin has bust and looted a fairly small scale bank. Brown has bust and is in the process of looting a medium sized economy.