Financiers Need To Be Controlled

The author, Geraint Anderson, is the son of Lord Donald Anderson, a Welsh Labour MP for 40 years who, no doubt, implanted the seed of doubt in Geraint's mind while he was making his multi-million pound fortune in the City, that what he was doing was self-destructive, destructive to the financial system, and destructive to society

The book tells how the system in the City breeds people with no loyalty except to themselves, so they maximize every opportunity for self-enrichment even if it's detrimental to their employers, their colleagues and to the financial system.

Anderson links this attitude to the destruction we are seeing all around us following the credit crunch, where financiers, greedy for commission and bonuses, did deals that they knew would fall apart creating huge losses for their employers - or for people to whom their employers could pass on the losses.

The employees didn't care that the deals they did would fall apart, because they still kept their bonuses and commissions.

The greedy guys got their money, and the taxpayer ended up having to provide trillions of dollars to bail out the financial system.

So a massive transfer of wealth was effected from the ordinary working people who keep the world ticking over, to a few financiers who do work which, according to Anderson, is of little benefit to anyone.

Which is ironic, because Anderson chillingly describes the effect of half-million quid bonuses on your personality, leading you to despise ordinary working people on ordinary incomes.

But the ordinary people, on ordinary incomes, were left to pick up the pieces.

Have you heard any politicians calling for tighter regulation of the financial industry in the future?

No. The  greed creed has infected almost everyone. "We'll need street violence that makes the Poll Tax riots look like a Cub Scouts convention before politicians consider fairer social policies", says Anderson.

Without fairer policies, we face an increasing gap between rich and poor, increasing street violence, and increasing economic crises as the West,  in the graphic phrase of William Jennings Bryan: 'Crucifies itself upon a cross of gold'.