The Bankers Who Funded Hitler — And Who Were Never Punished | WW2

Feb 20, 2026 | In the spring of 1943, an American banker travelled freely through Nazi Germany, held meetings with Reichsbank officials in Berlin, and boarded a German escort vessel back to Switzerland. Nazi U-boats had standing orders not to sink his ship. His name was Thomas McKittrick, and he was the president of the most powerful international bank in the world.

This is not a conspiracy theory. Every institution, every document, and every name in this video is a matter of verified historical record — sitting in the National Archives, in declassified Treasury memos, and in the minutes of the Nuremberg proceedings.

What you won't find in most history books is the full story of how Wall Street bankrolled the economic conditions that brought Hitler to power, how Standard Oil shared critical war technology with Nazi Germany while withholding it from the US military, how Chase National Bank kept its Paris branch open under Nazi occupation and reported growing profits to Manhattan, how the Bank for International Settlements laundered looted Nazi gold throughout the war, how Prescott Bush — grandfather of two US presidents — had his assets seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act, and how a Swedish banking dynasty quietly played both sides and walked away to build a $60 billion empire.

Most of these men were never prosecuted. Most were promoted. And the systems they built are still running today. This is what economic history actually looks like.

Queen Talks of 'Lax' Bankers and 'Toothless' Regulators behind Financial Crisis

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Queen has spoken about "lax" City workers and a banking regulator which "didn't have the teeth" to intervene as she discussed the causes of the financial crisis during a visit to the Bank of England

With her face on every banknote and coin in circulation, it is only natural that the Queen takes a sharp interest in the nation's finances, as she showed on a visit to the Bank of England today.

Her Majesty suggested the financial crisis of 2008 had happened because the Financial Services Authority “didn’t have the teeth” to rein in the biggest risk-takers.

The Duke of Edinburgh, meanwhile, had a typically blunt piece of advice for the Bank’s executives: “Don’t do it again!”

The Queen and the Duke grilled Bank of England staff during a visit which included a tour of a vault stacked with £27 billion worth of bullion.

Suit Kapadia, one of the Bank’s financial policy experts, said he wanted to answer a question the Queen asked academics at the London School of Economics in 2008 about why no one saw the financial crisis coming.

“Oh!” said the Queen, looking slightly taken aback.

Mr Kapadia said the City had got “complacent” because it thought risk was being managed better than it was, and the financial system had become too interconnected.

The Queen agreed: “People got a bit lax … perhaps it was difficult to foresee.”

She asked if the financial system was less interconnected now and concurred with a suggestion that part of the problem had been the lack of powers given to the Financial Services Authority. “They didn't have the teeth,” she said. » | Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter | Thursday, December 13, 2012

Vince Cable Tells Shareholders: Throw Out Bank Cheats

THE GUARDIAN: Bosses preside over 'moral quagmire', says business secretary, as Barclays chief Bob Diamond is summoned to face MPs

Vince Cable has urged shareholders in UK banks to rise up and purge their companies of corrupt executives, who he says have allowed "systemic abuse" to take root in the banking system.

The business secretary, writing in the Observer, says it is now clear that no one at Barclays Capital, the investment bank that triggered the market-rigging scandal, is prepared to take responsibility for endemic corruption, so the ultimate owners of banks must take matters into their own hands.

Describing the problems in UK banking as "a moral quagmire of almost biblical proportions", Cable says the government is taking urgent action, including creating a clearer separation between "casino-style investment banking" and retail banking on the high street. Ministers will this week begin a review into the libor system under which banks lend to each other and Cable hints that US-style criminal sanctions, such as the threat of prison terms, could be considered against those who abuse it.

But he says shareholder power will be crucial. "Regulators are a backstop: they don't own banks," he writes. "The governance at the top of our leading banks has been shown to be lamentably weak. No one at the top of Barclays will take responsibility for systemic abuse.

"Shareholders, the owners, have a major responsibility here. I am bringing in legislation to strengthen their control over pay and bonuses, through binding votes, but shareholders have to get a stronger grip on weak boards and out-of-control executives." » | Toby Helm, Jamie Doward and Jill Treanor | Saturday, June 30, 2012

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams Calls for New Tax on Bankers
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Archbishop of Canterbury has thrown his weight behind the St Paul’s Cathedral anti-capitalist protesters as he called for a new tax on banks.

Dr Rowan Williams said that the Church of England had a “proper interest in the ethics of the financial world” and warned that there had been “little visible change in banking practices” following the recession.

He urged David Cameron and George Osborne to drop their opposition to a European-wide tax on financial transactions, which is expected to be formally proposed by France and Germany at the G20 summit of world leaders starting tomorrow.

“The demands of the protesters have been vague. Many people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism; but it isn’t easy to say what we should do differently. It is time we tried to be more specific,” Dr Williams said.

The archbishop’s intervention came after the Church and the City of London Corporation agreed to suspend plans to evict protesters who have been camped on the doorstep of St Paul’s for more than two weeks. The issue has caused deep divisions within the Church and led to the resignation of three members of St Paul’s clergy.

The archbishop said the rows over the handling of the demonstration had risked “forgetting the substantive questions that prompted the protest”. “The protest at St Paul’s was seen by an unexpectedly large number of people as the expression of a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment that shows no sign of diminishing,” Dr Williams said.

“There is still a powerful sense around – fair or not – of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of impatience with a return to 'business as usual’ – represented by still-soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices.” He added: “The best outcome from the unhappy controversies at St Paul’s will be if the issues raised… can focus a concerted effort to move the debate on and effect credible change in the financial world.”

The archbishop said he supported the main proposals of a recent report from the Vatican calling for widespread financial reform. Read on and comment » | Robert Winnett, Victoria Ward and Richard Alleyne | Tuesday, November 01, 2011

My comment:

Should we tax the bankers? Yes, till the pips squeak! Is the Archbishop right to intervene? Yes, of course. The Pope did; and so should he. We need to re-introduce ethics into banking, just as there used to be. – Mark

This comment appears here, too.

This Week, Obama and Cameron Should Compare Notes – and Then Wake Up

THE SLOG: This is the last chance to put our banks back in the cage

For a few days starting tomorrow, President Obama will smile at the well-wishers in Britain, show deference to the Queen, and generally pretend to like us. While he’s around (and I’m not breaking any injunctions here) I understand he’s going to have an economics session with Prime Minister David Cameron.

If and when that meeting of barren minds takes place, they should be able to reach a simple conclusion: no matter how hard you try to get banks to behave like social animals, they will screw you and pump up their bonuses.

Obama tried to get help to the repossession sector of the US housing market, using Federal funds. The idea was ill-conceived (chucking good money after bad) but at least three major banks used the funds fraudulently, and are now the subject of SEC investigations. His man Bernanke has been pumping Fed funds into the banking sector, in an effort to increase liquidity into the economy, for nigh on two and a half years – depending on who you believe about when it stopped, or if it ever stopped. This ‘POMO’ (Permanent Open Market Operations) scheme’s main achievement has been to send the Dow through the roof: the banks used the money for two purposes – to underwrite multinational megamergers, and buy stocks on behalf of their clients. Jobs have been lost, not created, as a result of this double-cross.

Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne first of all tried to get the banks to set an example, and forego bonuses for 2010. Bob Diamond explained that this item would not be on the agenda, and they ended up paying themselves more than ever. Almost no money has filtered through to the small business sector after QE, and the financial sector – that’s the banks, remember – is still the only bit of the economy holding its end up. Not hard when you consider they’ve been doing it mainly with taxpayers’ money. Manufacturing has grown, but much as the Government tries to hype this, growth on a base of 12% of all economic output is a spit at the tornado of problems we face. » | John Ward |Monday, May 23, 2011

Wulff hält Bankern wegen Finanzkrise Standpauke
REUTERS DEUTSCHLAND: Berlin - Bundespräsident Christian Wulff hat den Banken die Leviten gelesen.

Die Ursachen der Finanzkrise seien nicht beseitigt, warnte das Staatsoberhaupt am Donnerstag auf dem Deutschen Bankentag in Berlin: "Ohne einen grundlegenden Kurswechsel drohen neue Finanzkrisen." Noch eine Rettungsaktion mit Steuermilliarden könne sich der Staat nicht leisten. Auch Kanzlerin Angela Merkel warnte, die Institute könnten sich bei künftigen Finanzkrisen nicht auf neue Staatshilfen verlassen. Die Branche räumte Fehler ein, warnte aber vor einer Überlastung ihrer Ertragskraft durch die Regulierungsoffensiven der Politik.

"Haben wir aus den Fehlern wirklich gelernt?", fragte Wulff die versammelte deutsche Hochfinanz: "Mein Fazit lautet: Nein - weder haben wir die Ursachen der Krise beseitigt, noch können wir heute sagen: Gefahr erkannt - Gefahr gebannt." Er habe Zweifel, dass der mit der Pleite der US-Investmentbank Lehman Brothers im Herbst 2008 ausgelöste globale Schock dauerhaft nachwirke. "Manchmal scheint mir, dass dank der staatlichen Krisenmaßnahmen der Schreck bei vielen verflogen ist und die alten Verhaltensweisen zurückgekehrt sind." Die Krise habe die Politik an die Grenze ihrer Möglichkeiten gebracht. Eine so große, konzertierte Rettungsaktion sei nicht wiederholbar.

Bis Ende des vergangenen Jahres hatte der Staat zur Stützung wackelnder Banken Garantien von bis zu 400 Milliarden Euro und bis zu 80 Milliarden Euro an Eigenkapitalhilfen bereitgestellt. Überall in Europa mussten sich die Regierungen schwer verschulden, um ihre Geldinstitute zu sichern. Das ist eine der Hauptursachen für die grassierende Schuldenkrise in der Euro-Zone. » © Reuters | Donnerstag, 31. März 2011

Anger at the Banks Is Justified, Mervyn King Says
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has expressed "surprise" that the public is not more angry with the bankers who caused the recession.

In some of his strongest language yet, Mervyn King today claimed the fall in households' living standards was the fault of the financial services sector and he expressed sympathy that innocent families paying the price.

"The people whose jobs were destroyed were in no way responsible for the excesses of the financial sector and the crisis that followed," he told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee.

In most aspects, he said, the economy had been on a sound footing before the crisis. Previous downturns were often caused by inefficiencies or weak management and were useful opportunities to improve systems. "None of that applied in this crisis," he said. "We had quite a successfully operating economy."

The people who are now suffering "did not get bonuses of the scale people in the financial sector got". The financial crisis may have occurred two years ago but, as austerity measures kick in, "the cost is now being felt", he said.

It remains "a big political problem", he added: "I'm surprised the real anger hasn't been greater than it has." >>> Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor | Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Mark Steel: We Owe It to Bankers to Feel Their Pain
THE INDEPENDENT: At last someone has dared to defend the oppressed people of the banking community. Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, who himself has to suffer the trauma of an £8m bonus, said yesterday that the bankers' "period of remorse and apology should be over". And you feel his pain, because the first words to cross your mind when you see a banker are "remorseful and apologetic". Then you're left worrying, "Oh, how I wish the poor souls were slightly less burdened with remorse about their bonus, and didn't apologise with such agonising sincerity about putting it into their wife's name in a series of untraceable accounts based in uninhabitable islands off Ecuador."

But at last they've learnt to stand up for themselves, and Bob Diamond has emerged as their Martin Luther King. Soon the whole banking community will declare: "Say it out loud, I'm 27 million quid in the black and I'm proud." >>> Mark Steel | Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Bravo, Mr Cable! Bravo! Vince Cable Attacks Bankers as 'Spivs and Gamblers'
THE TELEGRAPH: Vince Cable has attacked the “spivs and gamblers” who he claimed are more of a danger to the economy than militant union leaders.



The Business Secretary told the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool that it was right that the public was angry about the bankers’ bonuses.

He refused to tone down his comments, which have angered business leaders, about the “murky world of capitalism.”

He said: “I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow (the RMT union leader) could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.”

In another move that is likely to anger the Conservatives Mr Cable revelled in the fact that the Lib Dems had forced David Cameron to drop his pre-election commitment to a new inheritance tax limit.

To cheers from the Lib Dem delegates, he said: “You'll remember our Conservative colleagues campaigned in the General Election to lift the inheritance tax burden on double millionaires. But they have dropped that commitment.

“They have gone halfway to accepting our case for equalising income tax and capital gains tax rates. They have accepted in the Coalition Agreement that the priority for cutting income tax is for low earners not top earners.”

He also repeated his wish for a new tax on properties worth more than £2 million.

Mr Cable said: “I personally regret that mansion tax did not make it into the Coalition Agreement but in a coalition we have to compromise. But we can and should maintain our distinctive and progressive tax policies for the future.”

Mr Cable was unrepentant for talking about capitalism's failings.

He said: “The Government's agenda is not one of laissez-faire. Markets are often irrational or rigged. So I am shining a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour. >>> Andrew Porter, Political Editor | Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Terror Group In Warning To 'Criminal' Bankers
YAHOO! NEWS: The Real IRA has said it will resume attacks on the UK mainland - with banks and bankers its principal targets.

Vowing to alternate between "military, political and economic targets", the republican terror group has said that bankers are "criminals" and their role in funding Britain's colonial and capitalist system "has not gone unnoticed".

Responding to questions from The Guardian, a spokesman for the Real IRA said: "We have a track record of attacking high-profile economic targets and financial institutions.

"The bankers grease the politicians' palms, the politicians bail out the bankers with public funds, the bankers pay themselves fat bonuses and loan the money back to the public with interest.

"It's essentially a crime spree that benefits a social elite at the expense of many millions of victims." >>> Sky News | Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Bankers Party Like Recession Never Happened
SKY NEWS: Over 1000 bankers have been quaffing champagne like the recession never happened at the largest City party since the economic crash of 2007.

“The US Economy Will Not Recover For At Least Another Decade” – Engdahl

RUSSIA TODAY: “The US economy will not recover for at least another decade” – Engdahl: American bankers see themselves as the gods of money, a class above mere mortals, and they can do what they wish, said renowned economic researcher and historian William Engdahl in an interview with RT. >>> | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

WIKI: F. William Engdahl >>>

Rowan Williams Goes to Wall Street to Tell the Money Men to Repent
TIMES ONLINE: The whole world, and not just Britain, is broken, with continents such as Africa feeling forgotten and uncared for, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in the heart of New York’s financial district yesterday.

Any money men who might have happened in to Trinity Wall Street to shelter from the snow would have found a different sort of chill as Dr Rowan Williams delivered his lesson.

Standing at the lectern of the famously wealthy US Episcopal church, which lies at the head of Wall Street, the leader of the Anglican Communion condemned the “straw man” of self-interest.

His theme was that financiers, wordsmiths — in fact anyone in the Western world connected in any way with economic reality — should look at themselves in the mirror and repent.

Economic life had become independent of intelligent thought and “wildly irrational”, the Archbishop said. He condemned the “uncritical” way in which bankers and traders pursued wealth regardless of the consequences, selling expensive mortgages to the poor and repackaging them into complex products that few understood.

The “invention of more and more recondite metaphysical, unreal forms of wealth generation” existed, he said, simply to “produce noughts on the end of the balance sheet”.

Dr Williams, conscious that he was speaking close to a general election, echoed the social thought of the Roman Catholic Church when he added that society was founded on love, and there would be no sustainable model until this was recognised. >>> Ruth Gledhill and Alexandra Frean | Friday, January 29, 2010

Greed Is God Again, and We Have Learned Nothing
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: New Zealand's conservative Prime Minister, John Key, a former investment banker, summed up the state of the world financial system brilliantly during a recent visit to Sydney: "Six months ago, The Wall Street Journal came to interview me and asked me if capitalism was dead. Now Goldman Sachs is paying record bonuses."

After a near-death experience, the world financial system is returning to business as usual - only worse.

The Group of 20 countries, meeting at the end of this week in Pittsburgh, is supposed to be restructuring the system so that it "never happens again". Or, as Barack Obama put it last week: "We will not go back to the days of reckless behaviour and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis."

But we already are. Even if the G20 succeeds in every aspect of its well-intentioned agenda this week, the two greatest systemic problems stand unchanged and uncorrected.

The big investment banks, and Goldman Sachs is the biggest of them, have feasted on public money and, now, restored to strength, are throwing themselves back into the markets as recklessly as ever - only more so.

The big US investment banks are not just symbolic of the greed and excess of the pre-crisis craze. They were instrumental. They created, sold and traded the derivatives the world later came to know as "toxic assets''. But now, after restoring themselves with emergency government loans, they have repaid the US Treasury and rushed back into the markets. Goldman reported a record profit for the three months to the end of June of $US3.4 billion ($3.9 billion).

And the company - where average employee pay is $US700,000 - set aside a record $US11.4 billion for staff bonuses for the first half of the year alone. Guess where the firm made its biggest profit? From trading all the Treasury bonds the US Government issued to pay for the $US787 billion stimulus it injected into the economy to save it from the financial crisis.

Criticism of its bonuses sent Goldman's chief, Lloyd Blankfein (2007 salary plus bonus: $US70 million), out to give a contrite speech. But behind the facade, his firm was betting the bank once again. >>> Peter Hartcher* | Tuesday, September 22, 2009

*Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor and author of Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams: Bankers Have Failed to Repent
TIMES ONLINE: The Archbishop of Canterbury has waded into the debate on bankers' bonuses, warning that financiers feel no "repentance" for the excesses of the boom that led to financial meltdown.

Dr Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, said the Government should have acted to cap bonuses and he warned that the gap between rich and poor would lead to an increasingly "dysfunctional" society.

Dr Williams told BBC2's Newsnight programme: "There hasn't been a feeling of closure about what happened last year.

"There hasn't been what I would, as a Christian, call repentance. We haven't heard people saying 'well actually, no, we got it wrong and the whole fundamental principle on which we worked was unreal, empty'."

Asked if the City was returning to business as usual he said: "I worry. I feel that's precisely what I call the 'lack of closure' coming home to roost. It's a failure to name what was wrong. To name that, what I called last year 'idolatry', that projecting of reality and substance onto things that don't have them."

His remarks referred to an article he wrote in The Spectator a year ago in which he warned that society was at risk of turning to idolatry in its worship of wealth. >>> Robert Lindsay | Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Benedict Brogan: Should We Bang Up Some Bankers?
THE TELEGRAPH: Gillian Tett, the FT whizz whose book Fool’s Gold is the best explanation so far of the financial crisis, has a fascinating piece today which considers why we have not seen some of the bankers responsible for the mess put behind bars. She points out that in the wake of the Savings & Loan scandal in the US, 1,852 S&L officials were prosecuted and 1,072 of them served time. A further 2,558 bankers were also sent to prison.

So far there is no sign of a campaign of retributive justice on the same scale to deal with those who led the system to collapse. Is that a good thing? Locking up the casino boys may satisfy public hunger for revenge, but it does nothing to repair global finance.

Gillian Tett argues: “But if there is no retribution against financiers, it will be difficult to force a real change in behaviour. After all, no amount of twiddling with Basel rules or pious statements about bonuses will ever scare a financier as much as the thought of jail. Moreover, without some retribution it will also be hard to persuade voters that finance is really being reformed, or has any credibility or moral authority. That is bad for politicians and regulators. However, it is also bad for bankers too.” She reckons we should keep an eye out for signs of legal cases against bankers. And presumably prison sentences too? [Source: The Telegraph] Comment here | Benedict Brogan | Friday, September 04, 2009

Banks Defend Bonus Culture as Profits Jump
THE GUARDIAN: Barclays and HSBC made a passionate defence of the City's bonus culture yamid [sic] a growing public backlash about the return to a big pay bonanza barely a year after the government bailed out the financial system.

As criticism of bonuses crossed the traditional political divide, the banks compared their high-flyers to footballers and Hollywood stars to try to explain the need for the hundreds of thousands of pounds individuals are expected to receive this year. Neither bank gave figures about potential bonuses for investment banking staff, but a jump in profits in both operations led to speculation that huge pay deals will be awarded.

Profits at Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of the high street bank, doubled to £1bn while at HSBC's investment bank the profits rose 125% to $6.3bn. Each bank reported overall profits of nearly £3bn despite a combined £13bn of bad debts caused by rising unemployment, making it more difficult for households and companies to pay back loans. Bank shares jumped sharply, pushing the FTSE 100 to its highest level this year.

John Varley, chief executive of Barclays, turned to footballers to explain bankers' pay while Stuart Gulliver, who runs the investment bank at HSBC, used Hollywood stars. Varley said: "The football analogy certainly goes some way I think [to explain bonuses] ... There is simply no higher priority that to ensure we field the very best people. That in a sense is exactly the same as a football manager if they are going to win. Our obligation is to ensure we pay appropriately."

Gulliver likened the situation to a Hollywood studio that not only paid stars for pulling in profits, but also many of the extras. "If a foreign exchange trader makes a deal then they know two days later how much they made. If it's a £5m profit, that is something we can count, we can see it, its real. And they are part of a successful team," he said. >>> Jill Treanor and Phillip Inman | Monday, August 03, 2009

Sharia Boards: Scholars Hold Sway over the Success of Products
FINANCIAL TIMES: The ultimate arbiters of the Islamic finance industry are not regulators, bespoke-suited bankers or the authorities, but a small, select coterie of ascetically garbed scholars versed in Koranic verses and arcane areas of jurisprudence.

This was made abundantly clear last year, when Sheikh Taqi Usmani, a leading scholar of sharia-compliant finance, shocked the industry by declaring many Islamic bonds, or sukuk, had gone too far in mimicking conventional debt.

Bankers and lawyers debate whether it was Sheikh Taqi or the credit crunch that caused the sukuk market to clam up: most admit the denouncement did not help.

The sharia supervisory boards – that Islamic banks must have – approve or ban transactions, products and services but do not become involved in credit policy or portfolio choices.

This can bring them into conflict with bankers who have conjured up increasingly complicated products.

“I’ve seen banks where the relationships were close, and others where they were tense, but everyone knows you cannot do anything without the scholars’ blessing,” says an industry insider.

Bankers say – until the credit crunch – the scarcity of sharia scholars was the biggest drag on growth of the Islamic finance industry.

Islamic banks have multiplied in recent years, thanks to government support, a profusion of petrodollars and a favourably inclined customer base in much of the Muslim world.

However, the number of scholars qualified to pass judgment on banks has remained low at about 30-40.

In addition to exhaustive knowledge of sharia and Islamic jurisprudence, scholars have to be financially knowledgeable and comfortable with English – the language of most financial and legal documentation. >>> By Robin Wigglesworth | Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Gordon Brown Launches Damning Attack on Bankers
THE TELEGRAPH: Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has launched a damning attack on the behaviour of bankers in a speech to Wall Street financiers in New York.

The Premier accused bankers of operating “outside” everyday human values and principles in the run-up to the global economic crisis. He said that “avarice” had developed over the past few decades and now needed to be tackled.

Mr Brown is on a global economic mission ahead of next week’s G20 summit in London. Speaking in New York, he said that new international standards governing banking – and banking bonuses – would now have to be agreed by world leaders.

At a breakfast for business leaders, Mr Brown said that values such as “honesty, integrity and working hard” may have been absent from the financial system in recent years.

“The principles and values we apply in our everyday lives, you have got to ask did we apply them to the running of our financial institutions?,” he said.

“There is a sense that the global economy was outside these standards that we applied in our everyday lives… a world without standards is going to be a world without stability”.

The Prime Minister warned the Wall Street financiers that the major challenge they now face was to ensure honesty in financial dealings. He described it as an “epoch-making era”.

“Markets depend on morality in the end,” he said. “We are building for the first time not just a global economy but a global society.”

Among those attending the breakfast at the five-star Plaza hotel were the president of Citibank, directors of Morgan Stanley, the president of Nasdaq and the president of Goldman Sachs. >>> By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor in New York | Wednesday, March 25, 2009

No Bonuses for Bankers Says David Cameron
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has said that there should be no bonuses this year for senior staff at banks in which the Government holds a stake.


THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: He was speaking after The Sunday Telegraph disclosed that Lloyds Banking Group has drawn up plans to pay about £120 million in bonuses to staff even as it teeters on the brink of majority state ownership.

Sources close to Lloyds said the bank had drafted the bonus proposals and was "in consultation" about them with UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the Treasury body that owns a 43 per cent stake in the bank.

The revelations follow the disclosure last week that Royal Bank of Scotland, almost 70 per cent of which is owned by the taxpayer, was looking to pay staff as much as £1 billion in bonuses this year.

Mr Cameron said bonuses in future years should be paid in shares in the banks which can be cashed in only when it has entirely repaid the support it has received from the taxpayer.

He said he had no objection to bonuses of £1,000-£2,000 to low-ranking employees who have met targets and do not share the blame for the current financial crisis.

But the Tory leader told BBC1's The Politics Show: "For these banks that are owned by the taxpayer, or where the taxpayer has a large stake, it is completely wrong to be paying bonuses."

Mr Cameron said he raised the issue with Gordon Brown at the time of the banking bail-out in October, but the Prime Minister had been "asleep on the job". >>> By Duncan Gardham and Mark Kleinman | Sunday, February 15, 2009

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Gordon Brown Must Go, Says HBOS Whistleblower Paul Moore

Paul Moore, the bank whistleblower whose revelations forced the resignation of a senior Government adviser, has called for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to go for his part in creating the financial crisis.

Mr Moore, who was sacked after raising concerns over excessive risk-taking at HBOS, said Mr Brown should be "held accountable for his failure to oversee the stability of the country".

Following his explosive evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee last week, Mr Moore said he is planning to send the MPs a further dossier of 30 documents which will point the finger of blame for the bust at Mr Brown.

After Mr Moore's revelations forced the resignation of the deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority Sir James Crosby, Mr Brown told another parliamentary committee that HBOS's massive losses - estimated at more than £10 billion - were caused not by Government policy but by the bank's flawed business model.

But Mr Moore, who was head of risk at HBOS from 2002 to 2005, today told the Independent on Sunday: "The failure goes right to the heart of the system - to the internal supervisory system and right to the top of government.

"Brown must go. He cannot remain in office. >>> | Sunday, February 15, 2009

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Ministers Take Tougher Line on Bank Bonuses

Ministers and the Opposition hardened their line against bank bonuses today amid suggestions that Lloyds intended to go ahead with payouts worth £120m this year.

Tony McNulty, Employment Minister, said that any bank employee who had responsibility for the disastrous business model adopted by the banks should "not get a penny". Junior staff should be able to get between £1,000 and £2,000, he said, but anyone with a significant involvement in the business model should be paid nothing extra at all. >>> Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Jenny Booth | Sunday, February 15, 2009

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