One of the most unpleasant aspects of the current financial crisis is the fact that having run their various banks into the ground, the owners of those banks are now expecting governments to use taxpayers' money to bail them out and recoup their losses. Some, I guess, aren't so bad. They aren't trying to claim that they deserve the bailout; instead they are simply, and bluntly, pointing out to us, the people, that they are so crucial to the world economy that if we let them fail they'll take us with them. No, the ones that I find most offensive are those who somehow believe that they deserve to be bailed out.

I am of course talking about the Mancunian member of the public who called BBC News this afternoon to complain about the nationalisation of the Bradford and Bingley, a bank in which he was apparently a shareholder. He hadn't even bought the shares; he had instead acquired 250 shares when the former building society was transformed into a bank, an action he presumably voted in favour of.

Now that those shares have fallen in value from £6 to 20p, he is complaining that he feels "cheated", having had his "savings" taken away. He feels bitter that the government is looking after the bank's customers, but is doing nothing to help people like him. Apparently, they could have tried harder to save the bank, because there is "always something more you can do". At no point did he express any sympathy for the toxic debts that his failing bank had now dumped onto the UK taxpayer.

And when asked by the BBC presenter why he hadn't sold those shares earlier, when they started to fall in value, he said that he had enquired about doing that, but stopped when he found out that he would have to pay a portion of the sale price to the organisation that sold the shares for him, something that he still feels is unacceptable.

I'm a bit annoyed with the BBC for just letting him rant, without pointing out a few facts, namely:

a) it's called commission, idiot;

b) they weren't savings, they were a speculative investment;

c) when a business goes bankrupt the shareholders should be last in line to get anything, and only after all customers and creditors have been taken care of;

d) there is a strong argument to say that governments should let businesses go bankrupt when that bankruptcy is largely down to risky, reckless and irresponsible behaviour, since to do otherwise would only encourage bad people and punish the good.

Obviously, this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't rank this bloke along with the so-called masters of the universe. But he did quite genuinely annoy me. As stated in a previous post, I'm still unhappy about the mutual societies that converted into banks, so I was never going to be particularly sympathetic to him. But his stubborn insistence that he was entirely the victim, grated. Owning shares is a gamble. He gambled, with little skill, and lost a nice amount, but not a life-destroying figure. I'd recommend he walk away rather than whine that taxpayers should bail him out.

Tags: bradford & bingley
Current Mood: unsympathetic