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Almost
coincidentally with the ‘Brexit’ campaign getting its act together (sort of; we
have two competing sets of ‘Outers’) it has had an extraordinary piece of good
luck which could be worth a swathe of ‘out’ votes.
The ‘In’ crowd
is getting a large donation from Goldman Sachs.
First up, the
British electorate does not take kindly to foreigners sticking their noses into
UK politics. Especially something a sensitive and contested as Britain’s future
in the EU. Obama has consistently failed to understand this. His various
strictures about ‘Britain must stay’ have not gone down at all well.
We now have an
enormously wealthy New York bank, Goldman Sachs, grub-staking the ‘In-crowd’.
And a major part of the Out case is that the ‘Ins’ represent only the
interests of large corporations, banks, financiers of all stripes, and
tax-dodgers.
And it gets
better.
Golden Sacks
has more form than a Derby winner.
It is perhaps
most widely notorious for its role in the Greek debt crisis that brought the
country to the edge of bankruptcy and almost did for the Euro. It helped the
Greek government cover up the true state of its finances for 11 years through a
raft of derivatives deals so that it could qualify for Euro membership. When
the bubble burst Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy three times between 2010
and 2011.
The General
Manager of the Debt Management Agency was ex-G-S. No surprise there, then; when
it comes to revolving doors, G-S is the past-master.
Distinguished
alumni include Mario Monti, the former Italian Prime Minister; Omar
Issing formerly of the Bundesbank and the European Bank; boss of the ECB, Mario
Draghi; Antonio Borges, head of the European Department of the EMF. Not
forgetting Hank Paulson, the man who pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers, a
major competitor of G-S, when he was Secretary to the US Treasury. He was later
followed by Larry Summers.
Closer to
home, our very own Mark Carney was with G-S for13 years.
The ducking
and diving by ‘the Great Vampire Squid’ is difficult to grasp in its immense
extent.
At the
beginning of the ‘crunch’ in 2007, it made $4 billion betting on the collapse
of the sub-prime mortgage market. It made a profit of $350 million trading in
funds deposited by the Libyan Investment Authority whilst managing to lose 98%
of the $1.3 billion Libya had handed over. It is alleged to have taken part in
insider-trading over a long period, maybe 1986 to 2012. It was accused of
manipulating commodity prices including aluminium and oil futures, and of
taking kick-backs relating to IPOs. In 2010 it coughed up $550 million to
settle securities fraud charges; a Vice President was found guilty on 6
out of 7 counts. It also settled charges of ‘predatory’ mortgage dealing by
paying $60 million to the Massachusetts state government.
But it was not
all bad. In one year it reduced its tax liability from $6 billion to $14
million but then it does have 28 offshore ‘tax-efficient vehicles, 15 of them
in the Cayman Islands.
Now we have JP
Morgan (consultant: T Blair), Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley mulling over
large donations to the ‘In’ crowd.
The strategy
of the ‘in crowd appears to be to appeal almost solely to our cupidity; how much
is membership worth to us? The big noise for the ‘In’ campaign is Sir Michael
Rose, the less-than-impressive former boss of M&S. Today he tells us that
we pay into the Brussels coffers £350 per annum per head, and we get back
£3,500. Yeah, right. So where’s my cheque, Michael?
What bothers
the great British public more than the cash nexus is that the Grand Design that
they were conned into in the 1970s became the Great Illusion and is now the
Great Delusion. Brussels is seen as an incubus that is obsessed with trifles
such as vacuum cleaners, light bulbs, cucumber shapes and quotas for anglers.
The immigration crisis has shown that it is totally incapable of handling
important supra-national issues and is thus purposeless.
Nigel Farage
should be doing hand-stands!
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