Across the pond

Capitalism is collapsing, not because of ugly trade union bosses like Arthur Scargill, not because of the 2009 trade unions, who are pushing in UK for a minimum wage for low-paid employees.  But because of the men (and they are nearly all men) who have been managing most of the huge companies which dominate our lives, for nearly thirty years.

These men are not capitalists. They are wage earners like most of us. They have never risked their capital, which is the justification for capitalism. And unlike their equivalents in the 1920′s boom years, they have not broken the law. They have learnt some of the lessons of history.

But not all.

They have demanded the fruits of capitalism. Huge rewards for success. Without the penalty of capitalism. Failure may mean losing everything.

Sir Fred Goodwin is currently their champion, though he is one of many. He is insisting that he be paid a pension of  £650,000 a year at aged 50, although he acknowledges, that the company he was working for has collapsed because of his policies and his executive decisions.

He has not, I think, broken the law of the land. Indeed, his crucial ‘training’ for his career was his investigation as an able employee of a distinguished firm of accountants, into a Pakistani capitalist, who did break the law, and rob people of millions, half of which, Goodwin managed to recover.

Certainly a man with well-above average financial skills. And so it is easy to understand why he felt able, after his spell at not very well  paid ‘publc service’ a salary measured in milions for being the top employee in one of our giant companies, one of our citidels of capitalism, the Royal Bank of Scotland, which amongst many other companies, owns the Nat West Bank, which was the leader in England’s High Streets through the 1960s and the year’s following.

And which still runs those TV ads, portraying the bank manager as the chap who will look after your savings and foster, in a caring way, deserving small businessmen.

The reality, as we now know, is that Goodwin followed policies so in-ept and imprudent that it bankrupted his employer.

Yet now he is asking for a reward, which is nothing less than obscene, when you read that 30,000 of his fellow workers are going to be fired. Not because they have not done their jobs, and followed the management instructions, but because the management, led by Fred the Shed, got it terribly, terribly wrong.

So he expects £650,000 a year as a reward for failure.

He has failed, not only the shareholders of RBS, but also capialism. His disastrous tenure has led to ‘almost nationalisatin’, where the controlling shareholder is the British tax-payer, who will have to foot the bill for all the losses. And the ultimate boss is another honest, but mis-guided man, one Gordon Brown, who now not only has to run the country, he has to take decisions about a vast private enterprise corporation in deep trouble.

Since the financial crisis Brown’s stature has risen. He has behaved with calm and is clearly focussed on dealing with the sudden recession which is the worst since the 1930′s. The insiders, who know how grave the crisis is, have supported him. But as the opinion polls show the people are not convinced. His standing is far below that of the Old Etonian waiting in the wings to get his chance to rule the country.

The anger of the people is still only smouldering. Because only a minority have so far lost their jobs.

Cabinet ministers have mostly rallied to Brown’s aid in this time of national and international crisis.

But today, one leading cabinet minister, Harriet Harman, under questioning from Andrew Marr on his Politics show, one of the secular offerings on Sunday television, she said that whatever the law, the Government should urge Fred the Shed to do the decent thing.

Namely, not saddle the taxpayer with the additional burden of £12 million paid to the man who led RBS into this catastrophe.

The media web pages tonight, as a result, are talking about Harman challenging Brown’s leadership and making a bid for the leadership of the Labour Party. And suggesting that he might sack her.

So the debate is shifted.

Instead of focussing on the greed of those like Fred, who demanded and got these huge salaries – and ‘bonuses’ – it is shifted to the motivation of a mere woman, Harriet Harman.

So the question is not the validity of what she said. The focus is on whether she said it, not in honest opinion, but because she is plotting to oust Brown, her leader.

That in my view is media cynicism. Seeing all policians as self-a seeking lot greedy for power.

Unlike the journalists, whose job it is to report the ‘facts’ and help readers make up their own minds about the truth.

But the sad fact is that it is not only bankers and the governments who did not warn of the financial crisis that is engulfing us.

It is also nearly all the business journalists, who surely must have read about the Great Crash, and even listened to John Kenneth Galbraith talk about it.

But at least the vast majority of them were working for an ordinary wage. Not grabbing millions of the money of the shareholders or of their proprietors.

So, in this depression we need to look not only at the part played by the greedy bankers, we need to look at the way the media operates as well.