Once again, the world's entire banking system has come under the spotlight - much as it did in the days of the so-called "credit crunch", back in 2008, when governments rushed to bail out collapsing banks with public funds, following the implosion of the speculative "sub-prime" bubble which had been inflated by the very same banks.
The scandal triggered by Barclays' "Libor-fixing" has been gaining momentum by the day. It now turns out that, in addition to Barclays and all three other big British retail banks, another 16 international banks, from all over the industrialised world, are under investigation, in the US as well as in their own countries.
Closer to home, the Bank of England's governors themselves, together with high-ranking civil servants - and possibly ministers - are now up to their necks into this scandal. The very people who were meant to be "regulating" the banking system stand accused of having encouraged - if not conspired with - Barclays' management to break rules they were meant to enforce.
Subsidising the crooks
Ironically, this scandal broke out only weeks after the ConDems announced their latest banking bailout. This time round, the Bank of England will pump another £190bn worth of fresh cash into the coffers of these delinquent banks - almost as much as the "social protection" budget which is supposed to cater for the needs of millions of children, low-income households and pensioners!
For months Osborne had been bragging about the success of his austerity policy in preserving the "healthy" state of British banking - as opposed to the on-going crisis shaking the eurozone.
But with this new bailout, the ConDems have effectively admitted to the dire state of British banking. In effect, once again, the big banks are so overloaded with toxic assets that, just as in 2008, they may be threatening the economy with another credit crunch.
But how will splashing out more public funds on the banks resolve the problem? What has been achieved by the hundreds of billions already handed out to the banks in the past, except that it provided, first Labour and then the ConDems, with an excuse to turn the screw on the working population, by cutting welfare expenditure and public sector jobs and services?
This new bailout will only inflate the cash mountain already used by the banks to generate speculative profits. But this cash will certainly not be invested in the real economy when there's no compulsion on the banks to do so.
So how on earth can these crooks be trusted to take care of the interests of the economy as a whole, using public funds? When all the evidence shows that, right in the middle of the credit crunch, in 2008, their only concern was to appear to be in better shape than they really were, by fixing the Libor rate!
A bankrupt, criminal system
To "mend" this corrupt banking system, the only option politicians have to offer is yet another set of regulations and regulators. But neither Osborne's plan to split retail from investment banking, nor Miliband's rather baffling proposal to replace the existing four retails banks with seven new ones (!), will make the banks any less corrupt.
Fixing interest rates, thereby taking the risk of destabilising financial markets, was treated as a criminal activity in Barclays' case. But what is financial speculation, if not a kind of cheat poker, in which every possible trick in the book is used to deceive others, regardless of the consequences for the real economy? From the point of view of society as a whole, speculation is criminal - and yet it is treated as a "respectable" banking activity!
Only full nationalisation of the banking system, without compensation, and its consolidation into one single bank under the control of the working population, can end its corrupt profiteering!
But while the spotlight is on the banks today, their criminal behaviour only reflects the criminal nature of all capitalist profiteering. Because this sort of criminal, anti-social behaviour is not confined to banking or the financial sphere.
What about Britain's big non-financial companies? Do they use their huge cash reserves to invest in useful productions that would create jobs? No. Instead they pay higher rewards to shareholders, while taking advantage of the crisis to increase the level of exploitation of the workforce, in order to maximise their profits.
So, yes, it isn't just banking, but the whole profit system which is criminal - and which needs to be replaced!