Now this is a bit scary.

Reported in the Telegraph today, the government is planning to exercise a veto on the bonuses issued by the “rescued” banks. The story is here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4640786/Government-to-veto-bonuses-at-bailed-out-banks.html ". I find this deeply disturbing, not from the moral issue of giving rewards for failure, although this is what the Labour government has been doing with its MPs and ministers since 1997.

No, the problem here is nationalisation and micro management. Perhaps it would be wise to ask exactly who wanted to take the banks over. In the case of Lloyds Group it was arguably as a result of the Gordon Brown rescue deal that a stable and somewhat boring bank moved into rescue territory. Had they not been frog marched down the aisle to a shotgun wedding I’m certain they’d be in better shape than Barclays. But no, advised by a senior board member of Standard Chartered Bank (I wonder why a competitor would do this?) Gordon worked the deal to rescue HBOS.

Let’s just ponder that competitor thing though. A senior member of the board of Standard Chartered is credited with coming up with the government’s world domination, sorry finance rescue plan. In doing so it managed to remove at least one if not two serious competitors from the battlefield. Does anyone really think Gordon didn’t know this? Of course I could understand Alistair not seeing it, his head is so far up his own ego, he wouldn’t see a runaway train even if it hit him. But Gordon did know this and removed any official obstacles to the “marriage.”

The result of all this is that Lloyds who are a retail/high street bank have been tarred with the same brush as RBS, an aggressive retail and (this is the important bit) investment bank, that took itself to the wall due to its aggression (greed?). Clearly there is a need to differentiate here. Whilst I don’t buy the sob story put out by Lloyds that says their staff are deserving and low paid and rely on bonuses to top up that low pay, there is a need for perspective. RBS has received substantial sums because all on its own it ran aground and being Scottish, Gordon (a Scot by the way) has to be very keen to make sure Scotland receives support from the many English and Welsh taxpayers. Hence when RBS announces a billion pounds of bonuses he, rather embarrassingly so, has to do something.

But, as we know Lloyds is talking of relatively modest sums here. Not for them the “fat cat” numbers but a comparatively reasonable £120m to be spread all over its staff base. In very many cases this will equate to a bonus of hundreds, not thousands, not millions, of pounds.

But nationalisation, there I’ve said it, nationalisation as imposed by Gordon or perhaps that should be Standard Chartered Bank, means that they’ll be controlled to the point that lower tier individuals must suffer. Not only is this nationalisation, it is governmental bullying in the extreme. And perhaps because Gordon realises his fate, he doesn’t care that those people may well be labour voters.

The whole thing stinks I’m afraid.

Of course the foregoing is being controlled by UK Financial Investments, a government department set up specifically to monitor and watch the banks.

And now America its your turn:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4641959/Barack-Obama-appoints-team-to-save-car-industry.html". Seems frighteningly familiar don't you think?