Toxic bankers need rounding up

The General Election in Britain is literally under a cloud. The volcanic ash cloud is vying for top billing on the news channels with the leaders' debates. However, such a natural disaster as a volcano popping off dangerous substances should not stop us knowing what our political parties are going to do about the financial crisis that will engulf us far more seriously than this Icelandic cloud.

Today we hear that Goldman Sachs are dishing out bonuses to people who have made a fast buck out of thin air. Over the weekend we are told that the SEC in the USA is getting tough and have charged the bank and one of its bosses with fraud for selling customers sub-prime mortgages as the American housing market collapsed. A senior vice president in the investment bank's London office, Fabrice Tourre, was named in court papers as the "architect of the scheme". More like a simply conman it seems to me, but I musn't get prejudicial, must I?

I remember seeing a British TV reporter interviewing an African-American mother of two or three children as she sat on the delapidated porch of her erstwhile house as she decried the fact that she had got in over her head with a sub-prime mortgage. She was in debt bigtime as she spoke. But when she took out the loan she was on welfare. Any loan arranger could have seen straight away she was not in any way suitable for the mortgage market. Cut to the loan arranger. He was now out of work bemoaning the fact that he had let himself put greed before conscience. Both were a sorry pair indeed.

But they are just pawns in the game played out by the likes of the real paper shufflers in the banks. Goldman Sachs probably doesn't have a dime of its own. Most of what they have is very similar to this Icelandic ash cloud. In this sub-prime fiasco they took these ridiculous mortgages and repackaged them as highly desirable "investment vehicles". The South Sea Bubble brigade were their amateur predecessors by comparison. The SEC's director of enforcement Robert Khuzami has said, 'The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple.' Precisely!

As Goldman Sachs continues to run its casino, the bonuses keep coming. Fabrice Tourre is the executive charged with fraud. The bank bosses let him go on working in London despite a lawsuit against him by the US regulators. Have these people got any integity?

What we need to know during this election is what is going to happen to these casino banks? They have no money other than what's shown in their computers. It's legalised gambling commonly passed of as hedge fund administration, leveraging and other such Humpty Dumpty phraseology. It's financial Chinese whispers played to the game of musical chairs.

The truth of the matter is that these banks are so big that no auditor on earth can give us a truthful picture of what is happening. But it is not the political parties who will hold power after the election, it is the bankers. How many more people are shuffling money around that has no origin in reality? Are the sub-prime loans still doing the rounds? There's much talk from politicians but no real answers.

Let's get the transparency that we are seeking in politics rushing through the banking system. Otherwise there will be more like Tourre drifting in on the financial ash cloud.