Enough of these capitalist scroungers!

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
31 Jan 2012

So, RBS boss Stephen Hester has finally given up his £963,000 bonus for this year. But the media conveniently "forgets" that the same Hester earned a total of over £6m last year, that his salary this year is £1.2m and that he still stands to receive up to four times as much in shares, as part of a "long-term incentive plan". Obviously, the poor sod will have no problem to "make do"!

Nevertheless, politicians of all stripe are now hailing Hester's decision as their own "victory" and as an example of the "responsible capitalism" they are all keen to champion. The ConDems boast that their "light-touch" policy did the trick, while Labour boasts it was their threat of a Commons debate over Hester's bonus that did it.

But whatever may be the case, Hester's backing down changes nothing to the fact that he is representative of the parasitism of a finance sector that all politicians are keen to woo.

The tree that hides the forest

The furore around Hester's pay had a lot to do with the fact that, being 83% government-owned, RBS should be treated as part of the public sector.

But, of course, this was never the intention when Labour took over the bank. On the contrary, as Alistair Darling spelt out at the time, it would still be run as a private bank, just like any other, free to use the billions of public funds it had received to speculate in any way it wanted. And the ConDems have never dreamt of changing a state of affairs so favourable to the finance sharks!

Even at RBS, Hester's case is just the tree which hides the forest. Thanks to an EU regulation, banks now have to publish the salaries of their highest-paid personnel - albeit with some delay. Thus it turns out that, in 2010, while RBS was putting in place a plan to cut over 30,000 mostly low-paid jobs, the bank's top 323 earners netted £350 million between them. Did politicians raise a peep over this? No, neither over the job cuts, nor over these spongers' exorbitant pay!

But why just focus on RBS and not take to task the Barclays and the HSBCs of this world as well?

Both the ConDems and Labour argue that, unlike RBS and Lloyds, these "private" banks were not bailed out by public funds. But where would these "non-bailed out" banks be, if it had not been for the schemes set up by the Bank of England to buy back their "toxic" loans? Where would they be without the Bank of England's "quantitative easing", which put £275 billion-worth of freshly-printed cash into their coffers? Without this public bail-out, concealed behind the bogus "independence" of the Bank of England, how would the bank sharks have been able to carry on making billions out of gambling on financial markets?

Because this was, indeed, a very public bailout for which the rest of us are paying a heavy price - through the ConDems' austerity measures and through the current high inflation, which is cutting our living standards!

The leaches of capital

In 2010, the 1,265 highest paid individuals employed by the City's eight largest banks shared a total of £2.3 billion in pay - an average of £1.8m per head! The same year, the CEO's of the 100 largest City-based companies awarded themselves a 40% increase, to an average of almost £4.5m.

By means of comparison, the annual earnings of a dozen or so of these capitalist scroungers is equivalent to the "savings" that this government used to justify its welfare cap - which threatens to push tens of thousands of poor households into even more dire poverty!

One way or another, all these City high-flyers are paid by companies which have been bailed out by the state - whether it was by granting them tax rebates and direct subsidies, by covering their losses or by printing money for their benefit. And whatever the means used to bail them out, we, the working class, are made to foot the bill so that these fat cats can line their pockets with salaries which are so astronomical that it is hard to imagine how they can possibly spend so much money!

But what exactly do these characters do which warrants such huge piles of cash? Do they produce anything useful for society? No! On the contrary, their parasitic activity only contributes to the instability of the economy and was instrumental in causing the current crisis. Shouldn't they be put out of harm's way, instead?

Cameron's aids claimed that had the ConDems tried to stop Hester's bonus, the whole of the RBS board might have resigned. And so what? Good riddance! Who needs these parasites anyway? Let all of them resign, in every bank and every big company, and let's have civil servants take over, but under the direct control of the working class!