Yet again, one of Britain's banking giants has been caught red-handed and a top banker forced to resign as a result. And yet again, it is in New-York rather than London, that the scandal has come to light.
US financial regulators fined Barclays for fixing the so-called "Libor", an inter-bank lending rate which affects billions of pounds worth of daily financial transactions. But because Barclays grassed up its partners in crime, it only has to pay a £290m "transaction fine". Other banks, including RBS and HSBC, are now likely to face fines too.
Back in London, Adair Turner, head of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), told Sunday's Andrew Marr show that although the FSA had known all about these crooked practices at the time, there was nothing it could have done, since they weren't covered by Britain's criminal law. Never mind that such practices may wreak havoc on financial markets and, by the same token, in the real economy, while these same big banks' shareholders' rake in billions!
It wasn't for nothing that Cameron described banking as Britain's "main industry", to be protected at all costs, while he was at last week's EU summit. Yes, an "industry " which creates fake money out of thin air and makes profits by speculating at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the population!
But never mind. As far as the powers-that-be are concerned, Britain must and will remain a safe haven for the parasitism of the finance giants!
Subsidising the crooks
Ironically, all of this is happening barely two weeks after the ConDems announced their latest banking bailout - whereby the Bank of England will pump another £100bn into the coffers of the same delinquent banks.
Under the pretext of "encouraging banks to lend to small businesses" - which is supposed to create jobs - the banks have been invited to exchange any kind of unsaleable asset they may have against billions of pounds of cash, at a cost which is less than one-fourth the rate of inflation. To put it another way, the banks are effectively being paid by the Bank of England - and, therefore, by the rest of us - to borrow fresh cash!
Does it mean that the banks will lend to the real economy, as we are told? Since there's no mechanism to force them to do so, why should they? All previous schemes allegedly designed to achieve this aim have failed precisely for this reason. Why should it be different this time round?
But then, why would anyone expect these parasitic banks to do anything useful for the economy? Wasn't the present crisis triggered by their frantic profiteering in the first place?
Subsidising these crooked banks, as past Labour and ConDem governments have done since the beginning of the crisis, is just another way of lining the pockets of a tiny minority - which we, the working class majority, are paying for by being at the receiving end of the ConDems' austerity.
Only a full nationalisation of the banking system, without compensation, and its consolidation into one single big bank under the control of the population, could bring its parasitism to an end!
A bankrupt, criminal system
While the spotlight may be on the banks today, their criminal behaviour only reflects the criminal nature of the profiteering which drives the whole capitalist system.
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, speculation may be considered to be criminal, but it is considered a perfectly legitimate activity for banks and other financial institutions.
And this sort of criminal, anti-social behaviour is not confined to banking or the financial sphere. What about the behaviour of Britain's big non-financial companies? Not only do they take advantage of the crisis to increase workers' exploitation so as to maximise profits, but, rather than investing in useful productive activity, which would create jobs and reduce unemployment, they choose to hoard hundreds of billions of pounds of cash. And they use this cash to speculate, just like the banks do, because they consider that there's no profit to be made out of socially-useful investment!
So, yes, it isn't just banking, but the whole profit system which is criminal and rotten to the core - and which needs to be replaced!