The Banks Versus Al-Qaeda

(or, Searching For A Shockier Title Than 'I Hate Banks')
Imagine borrowing a few grand from a total stranger, taking that money to a casino, and losing. Losing so bad, your new-found poverty makes Les Mis' Fantine look comparatively chic. Now imagine begging your benefactor for more money, and returning to the casino. Imagine winning big, so big you can build a room in your house just like the room at the end of the Crystal Maze, full of shiny money from the future, so you can leap up and down in there, whooping like a daytime TV audience plant. Now here's the dilemma: do you share some of your winnings with the credulous twit who gave you the money in the first place, or do you just spend your winnings with a bunch of Thai prostitutes on a yacht made of cocaine?

Well, it all depends on whether or not you work in banking. If you do work in banking, presumably you think it's perfectly fine for the taxpayers, with their endless stream of disabled children, battered spouses and unreasonable demands for a quality of life that at least matches that of a lemming being chased into the sea by a pack of Walt Disney thugs, to give you loads of money without expecting any of it back. And, if you do happen to have a good day at the office, and that 3,000/1 gamble on Wayne Rooney doing anything remotely good in a world cup pays off, why should the taxpayer see any of that? After all, it was your genius as a banker, your immense financial nous, that enabled you to spot such a gilt-edged opportunity to turn a huge wad of phantasmal money that doesn't really exist into an even bigger wad of phantasmal money that doesn't really exist but still lets you buy small islands, portable Louis Vuitton chihuahua kennels and Manchester United.

And if the gamble doesn't pay off, and you suddenly owe a scary Russian gentleman twelve trillion phantasmal reubels that don't exist, but still enable scary Russian gentlemen to buy the Arctic while America sits there scratching its balls on the cusp of an international oil crisis, why on earth should you have to foot the bill? After all, it was your genius as a banker, your immense financial nous, that enabled you to lose such a vast - oh no, wait. It wasn't your fault at all. How silly of me.

I've heard that certain South American coca barons have quite the powder trade in order to study banking and finance. With their narcissism, greed, abhorrence of ethical behaviour and desire for giant Ferrero-Rocher made out of ground-up pandas and Siberian tiger pelts, they'd fit in perfectly. "What's that on your CV, senor Hernandez? Ah, I see you've had thirty years' experience in racketeering, extortion and bullying. Congratulations, you're exactly what we're looking for at HSOB. No, sir, that's not a typo. The SOB stands for... well, you can guess what it stands for."

Now, I don't want to change the world, or demand that humanity takes a huge evolutionary leap so that we can forget all this silly money business and just swap bubblegum cards instead (you know, like in Marx), but is it really too much to ask for the banks to take RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN MISTAKES? According to the British government, er... yes, it is. We're plunged into the sweltering depths of a recession that has cost jobs, destroyed the quality of life for the most vulnerable in society, and turned Capitalism into an utter laughing stock, and the people responsible are... well, if I postulated that they might allegedly be snorting cocaine off the severed wing of a Canadian condor on a private island called Timothy (or something equally bleurgh) somewhere off the coast of Arsehole, it might not be far from the truth. Or, the truth might be much, much uglier and infinitely more morally reprehensible. The island might be called Tarquin. Or Dunthievin.

So that's the banks. Not all of them, of course. Some of the banks had nothing to do with bringing civilisation to its knees. Riverbanks for example, or Banksy, Carlton Banks off Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Jeff Banks (whose clothing range had nothing to do with the financial crisis). Yes, some banks are great. Some banks even make you laugh because they danced funny on TV and had a good on-screen chemistry with Will Smith but strangely don't seem to have done anything since. Yes, some banks are fab.

But then again, some banks are contemptible, noxious, utterly parasitical nests of bastards. And just in case you were feeling sorry for those particular nests of bastards who hurled us down the poo-pipe, ask yourself this:

Q: who has done more damage to Britain: the banks or Al-Qaeda?
A: (oh come on, it's easy; now imagine giving Bin Laden five billion of your hard-earned wonga.)

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Footnote: Littleorangedogs, commenting on Simon Jenkins' spiffing piece, managed to say the above better than I ever could, in less space. And it probably took him/her less time, too. Gah!