The FT reports this morning that:
Eurozone banks are raising the threat of being nationalised in an effort to fend off suffering losses of up to 50 per cent on their Greek bonds should the terms of Greece's bail-out be redrawn.
Now let's get real here: these banks are dead in the water. They're going to fail the tests of solvency that they must pass to continue trading. It's their own fault they'll fail: they made the mistakes (following Goldman Sachs lead, let's be clear) of funding a government that had been duped into acts of deception by the very banks now failing as a consequence.
And now they're bleating that they can't be nationalised? Don't they realise that is inevitable?
More than that, since they've failed don't they realise the only rightful act is that their equity is wiped out and nationalisation take place for nothing, with the new state provided bank capital owning 100% of the company?
That is the only way forward. It's what the rule of the market demands. But they don't like that rule, not when it does not suit them.
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Banks do not welcome accountability. By anyone – to anyone.
Can we be sure that even a “nationalised” bank will be accountable to the tax payer?
In 1946 Atlee’s government “nationalised” the Bank of England (Est.1694) but because the bank’s future activities and functions were not delineated the bank continues to be manipulated by the same Old Etonian merchant bankers. — and in reality the bank still functions as privately owned.
RBS is a prime example of how despite being “owned” by the tax payer it continues to act like errr … bankers. Perhaps “The Courageous State” will explain further?
If the banks were going to be nationalised, their equity would be trading at zero. The banks might need capital injections, but full nationalisation is never going to happen.
That’s utter nonsense – companies that go bust are rarely worth zero the day before
Your logic is as bizarre as your confidence is misplaced
I never understood how RBS could go 100% bust, but after being rescued by the taxpayer we only ended up owning 83% of it?
Because Labour got that seriously wrong due to fear of nationalisation
Embrace it I say
This comment was deleted for providing what was very clearly a false email address
Nothing shows more clearly than the treatment the banks have received and continue to demand, how ‘free market’ has been a con.
Rather than the fact of the rich getting richer being an incidental by-product of ‘logical’ ‘free market’ goal, increased wealth disparity has in fact been the goal for which ‘free market’ rhetoric has been the means – but only when it suits.
This needs serious and urgent consideration in relation to the trade agreements we are being signed up to by the EU, all running on the same con,.
This is where neoliberalism, which must now be recognised in this light, and similarly runnng on free market logic, imperatives and spin, gets tied into hard iirreversible international law.
Once signed up, commitments can now be enforced with the possibility of huge financial penalty claims by corporations against the state, if the state tries to backtrack. (This is called ‘investor protection’ – the EU is just introducing it. It is a major guard against nationalisations)
‘due to fear of nationalisation’ …and being the nice accommodating hosts to the financial parasites that Gordon Brown etc. were (e.g. appointing a creepy inner circle of ex-bankers such as Lady Vadera).
I’m not singling Labour out here. It’s true of all parties and across the world. If only a true statesman would step forward and push aside the shockingly acquiescent ‘leadership’ that the western democracies have somehow found themselves foisted with. Someone with half the guts of FDR would do.
It doesn’t seem likely. No wonder that the ‘Occupy’ movement is taking hold.
Oops this post was in response to Richard’s reply to my earlier post (see No. 2)
Your logic is also part of the thesis of the Courageous State