21/05/2015
And so it is that Sir Mike Rake, president of the CBI,
avers that: "No-one has yet set out a credible alternative future to EU membership. The current alternatives are not realistic options - little or no influence and the obligation to comply with EU principles whilst still paying most of the costs".
If Rake doesn't actually know he's wrong, he should do. But, for a man who in 2003 wrote a pamphlet on "
How to join the euro", ignorance is a way of life. Us plebs and
our work don't exist. It is perhaps not surprising,therefore, that he thinks of us as "no one". To him, we're not even the dirt on the soles of his expensive shoes.
But hang on a minute. Isn't this Mike Rake also deputy chairman of Barclays Bank? And isn't this the bank that
has just been fined £284.4m by the Financial Conduct Authority â the biggest bank fine in UK's history - over "brazen" currency rigging?
And this is the day
we also see four of the world's biggest banks - including Barclays - agree to plead guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of US dollar and euros, while a fifth bank, UBS, is pleading guilty to parallel but separate interest rate rigging charges.
Together, Citi, JPMorgan, Barclays, RBS, Bank of America and UBS will pay almost $6 billion to the American authorities, bringing the total fines over the foreign exchange scandal to $9 billion. Barclays must pay the biggest fine, equivalent to £1.5 billion.
And this comes right on the heels of the Libor interest rate scandal, where banks were found to be rigging the rates banks use to lend to each other to their advantage.
The US authorities discovered that between December 2007 and January 2013, traders at Citi, JPMorgan, Barclays, UBS and RBS referred to themselves as "The Cartel" in chatrooms where they used coded language to set benchmark rates. One Barclays trader wrote in a chatroom in November 2010: "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't trying".
And so, this "cheatin' bank", subject to the biggest fine in UK banking history, has its deputy chairman who is
telling business to "speak out early" to stop the UK voting to leave Europe.
On this, I think the phrase I'm looking for is "foxtrot oscar" - although I am surprised at my own restraint. These dregs should be in prison. At the very least, Rake should concentrate on cleaning up his own "stinking cesspit of corporate corruption" and keep his nose out of our affairs. As we
remarked earlier, how we are governed is none of his business.
Why should we listen to corrupt, cheating businesses telling us how to vote in our referendum? They should shut up and mind their own business.
