- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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Barclays insider lifts lid on bank's toxic culture
Bob and his mates. Photo: Financial Times
“A former senior Barclays employee today exposes the “culture of fear” that operated at the bank and claims Bob Diamond would have been aware of his traders' activities.
Speaking exclusively to The Independent, the banker alleges that senior executives would have known of Libor fiddling in 2008.”…
“Punishing hours, victimisation, physical intimidation, arbitrary dismissal. Such is the portrait of working conditions under Bob Diamond described by a former employee in today's Independent. Perhaps those Barclays Capital bankers deserved their bonuses after all, just for putting up with him.
Now I doubt many people thought trading floors were a sanctuary of civility, gentility and compassion. Based on my experience at Bank of America in the 1990s, I would say they are Darwinian environments where large egos prosper and sensitive souls suffer. But I never witnessed the kind of fist-bashing detailed by the whistleblower. Nor the paranoid centralisation of power. Nor the shameless favouritism”…
Read more:
Exclusive: Barclays insider lifts lid on bank's toxic culture
Dan Gledhill: No one thinks the City is a picnic. But this was brutal
Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Globalisation for the Common Good
The Barclays scandal, Bob Diamond, the Riots, and the Rioters: Where is Justice?
Whatever Happened to the Moral Compass? Britain engulfed in corruption
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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“Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.
Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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Dr. Peter Bowman is Science Coordinator on the University Preparatory Certificate at University College London (UCL) and tutors economics at the School of Economic Science, London, UK
When I read Anthony Werner’s recent guest Blog “Can taxation be fair?”* it reminded me of a quotation I had read recently from JR McCulloch, first professor of political economy at UCL where I work. This is what he had to say about income tax:
‘The tax would fall with its full weight upon men of integrity, while the millionaire of “easy virtue” would well nigh escape it altogether. It would, in fact, be a tax on honesty, and a bounty on perjury and fraud; and, if carried to any considerable height—to such a height as to render it a prominent source of income—it would undoubtedly generate the most barefaced prostitution of principle, and would do much to obliterate that nice sense of honour which is the very foundation of national probity and virtue.’
This rings very true today as, in these times of austerity, the issue of tax avoidance and evasion has come to the fore. At one level the deliberate avoidance or evasion of tax is a gross injustice and is particularly malevolent in these straitened times. But McCulloch’s quote raises a different point which I wish to pursue and that is the question of how effective, how just, in simple terms how “good” are the taxes that honest citizens are expected to pay. If we as a society demand that everyone should pay their fare share of tax should we not also demand that the taxes we have to pay are “good” taxes? What do I mean by “good” taxes? Classical economics gives four criteria – (1) they should be fair, so no-one gains an unfair advantage, (2) they should be certain so it is clear how much everyone should pay, (3) they should be easy and cheap to collect and (4) they should fall as lightly as possible on production so they do not inhibit growth. For simplicity I will call taxes which fulfill these criteria “good” and ones that do not “bad.”
- Britain engulfed in Corruption: Costs& Consequences
- Britain engulfed in corruption Part IV: Is Britain more corrupt than it thinks?
- My Guest Blogger Steve Szeghi: Student Loan Debt in the United States, Time to Forgive
- Britain engulfed in corruption Part III: …And now GlaxoSmithKline fined $3bn for healthcare fraud
- Disgusted with rampant corruption, injustice, crony capitalism, and…? Then, it is Time to Get Crazy