Iceland vs Gordon Brown

Iceland vs Gordon Brown

By Dark Politricks

If you follow me on twitter at @darkpolitricks you will know I have just had a few days in Iceland. It was on my bucket list of things to do before I die and I had some cash so why not. I just wish I brought a video camera or better camera as the amount of rants I heard from taxi drivers about Gordon Browns actions during the Icelandic banking collapse could have filled 60+ minutes.

I had to get taxis as standing around in minus 10C waiting for a bus that will most likely drive past you isn't much fun. However I am glad I did. Not only was every single taxi driver able to speak perfect English but they are on the ball when it comes to politics, international relations and how the world really works.

Every single person I talked to was sick to the teeth of Gordon Browns action to use anti-terrorism laws to freeze Icelandic money in British banks. Not only did this help worsen the economic crisis in Iceland but it made the Icelandic people think they had been betrayed by a friend and ally.

If you don't know, Iceland kept the Brits alive during World War II by sending over fish for us to eat whilst all our trans Atlantic ships were being destroyed by German U-Boats. A little known fact is that per capita, Iceland lost the most people in the war, more than Russia, more than the Jews and more than the USA and UK combined. They only have a population of 320,000 (now), so a lot less back then, so you can see how many a few thousand people's deaths would compare to the total population.

Iceland suffered their economic crisis between October 2008 and the 31 August 2011, which was the day where the international bailout support programme led by the IMF officially ended.

The economic crisis revolved around a few Icelandic banks which were offering stupidly high rates of interest which attracted many foreign investors including many UK local authorities. Our dear leader of the time, Gordon Brown, had told them to invest their money in the highest paying interest accounts they could find. The Icelandic banks were offering high rates and were thus used by many.

The problem was that these rates of interest were totally unrealistic and there was no security for screw ups. In the UK we get up to £85,000 protected if the bank goes bust. So the Government bails small account holders out up to that sum. However Iceland failed to do this for foreign investors and it sent Brown and co fuming.

Every taxi driver I spoke to said that anyone with half a brain cell could see these banks high interest schemes would fail in the end and they eventually did. However Gordon Brown was having none of it. The UK along with the Dutch, demanded that Iceland pay back all the monies owed with interest or they would be thrown out the IMF.

Gordon Brown froze any Icelandic money in UK banks and used anti-terrorism laws to do so. This prompted the Iceland's prime minister Geir Haarde to call it "a completely unfriendly act" and was disgusted that a supposedly friendly nation was calling their country terrorists.

More than 25% of the Icelandic population (over 80,000 people) signed an online petition called "Icelanders are not terrorists". The UK responded by cancelling its scheduled patrol of the Icelandic airspace in December 2008. As Iceland has no standing army of its own it relies on other NATO nations to take turns in protecting it. The UK pulled out of this agreement leaving Iceland vulnerable to attack.

Iceland basically stuck two fingers up at these threats, kicked their whole government out when they seemed to bend over to the demands and took matters into their own hands by voting in a coalition government led by the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement.

They even won a court case in the court of the European Free trade Area, when the UK and Holland took Iceland to court over the failure to payback depositors in the failed banks. The court ruled on the 29th January 2013 in favour of the Icelandic banks and saved the country from having to pay back billions to foreign savers.

The EFTA court dismissed an application by the EFTA surveillance authority, which claimed that Iceland had failed to comply with an obligation to ensure compensation of a minimum €20,000 to Icesave depositors in the UK and Netherlands. Over €6.7 billion was owed to UK and Dutch investors and whilst the UK paid back the investors out of their own tax payers money, they then demanded that Iceland was to pay back the money to them.

However logic and reason won the day and when Iceland's President's Olafur Grimsson refused to sign an amended law on repayment he forced a national referendum on the issue and 94% of Icelanders rejected the move to payback the cash.

The judges have sided with Iceland in the matter and it was plainly obvious that the rates of interest were unsustainable and a payback to foreign depositors was unfeasible. The Iceland banks are actually paying back some of the money by selling off assets so that people won't lose out - it is just the unrealistic rates of interest that won't be given back to savers.

At the time the crisis resulted in massive migration from Iceland yet Iceland's economy stabilized under the government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and GDP actually grew by 1.6% in 2012. However many Icelanders remained unhappy with the state of the economy and government austerity policies. In 2013 they voted back in the same people who were in power during the crisis, the centre-right Independence Party but in coalition with the Progressive Party.

Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s systemic banking collapse was the largest suffered by any country in history. The amount of money owed by the 3 Icelandic banks taken into national ownership was equal to more than 11 times Icelandic GDP.

They also threw a load of banksters into prison - can you see a trend here? These people included:

• Baldur Guðlaugsson, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, who was sentenced to two years probation by the District Court of Reykjavík for insider trading.
• Aron Karlsson was sentenced to 2 years in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for defrauding Arion Bank in real estate dealings.
• Lárus Welding, CEO of Glitnir, and Guðmundur Hjaltason, Managing Director of Corporate Banking of Glitnir, were sentenced to 9 months in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for a major breach of trust.
• Friðfinnur Ragnar Sigurðsson, Glitnir employee, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the District Court of Reykjanes for insider trading.
• Styrmi Þór Bragason, President of MP Bank, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the Supreme Court for breach of trust.

The other thing to note is that whilst Ireland and Greece are now suffering like hell due to their Governments subservience to the banksters and their German EU masters Iceland is recovering well.

Instead of loading future generations up to the eyeballs with huge debt, and suffering serve austerity like many European countries Iceland is well on the way to recovery.

They have had one of the fastest economic recoveries on record. They stuck to their guns and told the banksters to fuck off. This is a lesson others should follow.


GDP of Nordic countries including Iceland from 2000 to 2007

Not only do the Icelandic people do things their way, but they are the leaders in the world for press freedom and Internet freedom.

Everywhere I went, whether it was the airport, the bus from the airport, the hotel, pubs, clubs or restaurants, all had free WI-FI. No logons just Internet access wherever I went, it was great.

No wonder many companies who don't want hassle from the NSA/GCHQ nexus of spy bitches base their servers there. It's just a shame we are sucking data straight from cables and main routers and until other countries build their own Internet infrastructure the axis of spying will continue to do so.

It is also not coincidence that the owner of Lavabit, who closed his business rather than succumb to threats to spy on his customers, was told by his lawyers that Iceland was one place he could move to and setup his business to escape NSA spying and Security Letters.

You can watch his interview on RT.com below.


The fact that anti-terrorism laws were used and abused by Gordon Brown shows that their true intention was nothing to do with terror but more to do with control over people.

The same laws were used to attack an 82 year man who dared protest the Iraq war during a Labour conference. Walter Wolfgang was dragged out of the conference for daring to heckle Jack Straw and detained under the terrorism act in 2005. They were also repeatedly used by the previous Labour government to detain and question tourists and other photographers "daring" to take photos of London landmarks.

Gordon Brown was only following in the foot steps of Tony Blair, the war mongerer who took us into 4 wars, destroyed many civil liberties and did more to destroy the picture of Labour as the "peoples party" than any other Prime Minister in recent years.

However whilst the UK is languishing in debt, the Greeks are begging on the streets and the Irish are cutting back services and trying to find ways to pay back their own banking debts the Icelandic people are doing just fine.

If you don't mind the cold, enjoy beautiful women and scenery then Iceland is one place to definitely consider going. Not only is everyone friendly but they all speak English and everyone I met was a good laugh. The fact that booze is so expensive yet the Icelandic people knock it back in gallons from 10pm to 6 am most nights must indicate that people are being paid enough to have a good time.

So whilst I had to apologise for my Governments behaviour constantly, I also let the Icelandic people know we also hated the Labour Government just as much as they do.

The fact that we are still suffering under many of Labours big brother laws, and that the farcical Protection of Freedoms Bill which promised so much when a Lib Dem idea yet turned into a "freedom from wheelclamping" bill just goes to show that none of our current political parties can be trusted when it comes to protecting our civil liberties and hard-won rights.

So just remember the next time the Daily Mail or Sun attacks the EU Human Rights Act or our PM threatens to pull out of it. We invented the thing in the first place after the 2nd world war. On top of that these rights protect you and me as well as the tiny minority of Jihadists the papers like to trot out as examples of the bill's failure. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater is the appropriate saying!

We don't have a written Bill of Rights like the American's (not that it seems to be doing much to help them anymore) so we must take what we can.

Until we get our own Bill of Rights and proper protection of free speech, without journalists boyfriends being detained at airports for revealing the massive spying our Government does on us, we should be happy for anyone who sticks up for our liberty.

The Icelandic people saw us as friends. When Gordon Brown froze their money it made it hard for them to import goods and prices shot up in their country. His act did more to harm them than the banking crisis in the first place.

The fact that a court sided with them just shows that he was in the wrong and they were right to ignore his demands.

Well done Iceland.

View the original article Why Icelandic people hate Gordon Brown at darkpolitricks.com.

Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?

Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?

By Dark Politricks

I just saw an advert on Channel 5 USA (a UK channel) in which a PPI Claims company said that if you had taken a loan out within 15 years and had added Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) then you could attempt to claim it back.

Now I had taken a load of loans out in my youth, with PPI, and when the first adverts started appearing the adverts were only saying that you could claim the money back if you had taken a loan out within the past 3 years. I didn't do anything because my loans were 10 years old.

However it seemed that the time length that you could claim for was extending and extending every few months. It seemed to coincide with the UK finances getting worse and our GDP going down and inflation going up.

First I started seeing adverts for 5 then 7 years and then when I first saw an advert earlier this year for 10 years I was straight on the phone. I shouldn't have gone through one of the "specialist PPI companies" however it was money I wouldn't have got back if I hadn't of attempted it in the first place - so in reality it was literally free cash in my pocket.

From an initial 3 years to 15 years is a long time and I have a feeling that the government is hoping that PPI payouts will help stimulate the economy by putting money back into people's pockets in a stealthy Keynesian method without any government minister having to  admit to it of course! Austerity, Austerity - that is the only way says our supposed economic wizard George Osborne.

It is Georgey boy who's claim that our deficit and debt would be reduced through his spending cuts and VAT tax rises would have started working by now. Anyone with half an eye can see they blatantly haven't done the job.

Their are no private jobs rushing in to fill all the public ones he is gutting. He is forcing people off disability allowance onto job-seekers (a much lower benefit) and making them look for jobs that don't exist.

He is introducing "bedroom" taxes  for the poor so that people with extra rooms have to give up more of their money or move across  the country to places where one bedroom flats exist. All the while he is cutting public services and yet at the same time he has reduced the top rate of tax for the richest people in the country. What happened to "We are all in this together"?

The politicians know the banks were mainly to blame for our current crisis and the UK is one of the most indebted nations on the planet.

This doesn't only include Government debt but personal debt as well. All through the later 90's, and the years of the Labour government, people were re-mortgaging their houses and spending the money or having loans literally thrown at them by the banks. I know for a fact I and many other people I know were.

After the first law suit over PPI was won by someone years ago the banks have had to set aside billions in case they had to pay out more to future customers who were mis sold PPI.

From The International Business Times

PPI has become the biggest mis-selling scandal to hit UK banks and they have repeatedly underestimated the scale of the problem.

Britain's biggest retail bank, Lloyds Banking Group Plc , has set aside 6.8 billion pounds for PPI compensation. Barclays Plc has set aside 2.6 billion and RBS has provisioned 2.2 billion.

So far the banks have set aside around £20 billion and the payouts so far amount to £8.9 billion.

Payment Protection Insurance was meant to protect borrowers against redundancy and sickness , but it was often sold to customers who didn't want or need it or who couldn't claim it even if they took it out. People such as those with certain medical conditions or people who were self employed. Often, like myself, I had PPI added to my loans or credit cards without my knowledge!

The worst thing, in my mind anyway, was that if you had to claim (as I did once) the money from the insurance only lasted for a year. Plus the amount the insurance cost you worked out exactly the same as if you had added an extra years worth of  loan to your original debt. It was a total con!

Because the UK finances are in such a state and recent news reports show customers are holding back from buying goods. I have a sneaky feeling that the government is secretly hoping that the PPI payouts will be a way of putting cash into potential shoppers pockets to stimulate the economy. The added benefit of course is that it's all at the cost of the banks who caused the mess in the first place.

To me it sounds like a good plan. The banksters are the ones who caused the mess and I am not joking when I said they used tot literally  throw loans at people.

For instance I was given a £5,000 loan when I left college with no job or way of paying it back. Then every year the same bank would give me an extra £5,000 - £7,000 loan and overdrafts up to £3,500 to pay back the outstanding amount and give me some more spending cash! It was truly a time when "debt was good" and people didn't think about the future.

As a young man who didn't really think he would have to pay back the money anyway (I had a bit of death wish back then, plus the money management skills of a frog) it seemed like free money and I grabbed whatever the banks would offer me. One of the things I often feel our schools let the population down with is real world lessons in living. How to manage money, how to look after yourself, how money works, how to use logic and reason and think for yourself.

Young men are worse than woman who are often taught these skills from their mothers so if the schools are not teaching the boys and they are not getting taught at home they are left to the mercy of the loan sharks and banksters. Shuffling money from one account to another to pay off monthly repayments and sticking to the minimum payment to keep them off your back is not exactly "good" money management!

Unlike other people I know who "went missing" for 5+ years and now have mortgages and are debt free. I honestly OR  stupidly (pick your own word) decided to pay off my debts. Even thought this took over 6 years I managed to do it. Therefore when I saw the opportunity to reclaim all the PPI which amounted to around £5,000 I took it.

Some credit cards I didn't even realise I had PPI on at the time and on other banks I had no details apart from the name of the bank but their customer service department returned a list of 6 loan accounts taken out within 7 years. I used one of these companies on TV but didn't realise they took a THIRD of the money as recompense for doing the job you could easily do yourself.

Luckily for me they forgot about one loan and I got £2,000 all to myself without deductions but I would recommend anyone who has ever taken a loan out in the last 15 years to check if they can reclaim the PPI on it.

The Government is not helping us and the banksters who caused the mess are still making billions therefore we should not feel sorry for them in the slightest.

Just remember if the EU can order the Cypriot government to just take 10% of any bank savings without your say then who is to say the UK government won't do the same?

I would expect the time you can claim for any PPI to continue to go up and up until either the banks have dolled out all the money they said they set aside years ago but haven't given out yet. Or until the UK GDP rises above a single percentage point for more than 3 months in a row!

To anyone thinking of claiming their PPI back I would definitely recommend everyone to do the work themselves. It is not hard.

You can just write t o the banks customer complaints department and ask for all your loan details that had PPI on them, then write a letter back saying you want your PPI money for any of the following reasons:

1. You were not informed that the PPI protection would only last a year.
2. The PPI was added without your consent.
3. You were self employed which meant the PPI wouldn't cover you.
4. You were depressed or had another medical complaint that would have meant the insurance would not be paid out.
5. You were not informed you wouldn't get the insurance if you were sacked.
6. The PPI insurance was not fully explained to you at the time. Most of the employees who sold the PPI will be long gone and those that remain won't remember what  they said when they sold it to you. Therefore this is probably the best one to use as they will not be able to re-call what they said when they sold the loan to you.

A good thing to do is to write off to one of these PPI companies, get a payment pack sent to you and see what sort of questions they ask you to answer. All they do is use the answers and send the paper work off to the same places you could easily do. Therefore use these packs as a guide and write to the same Financial Ombusdman yourself if  the Bank doesn't pay out after your first letter of complaint.

Remember - this could be your chance of getting out of any recent debt. If they are going back 15 years then I would guess that the majority of adults in this country would have had a credit card or loan within than time. Even if you don't think you took PPI out it is worth checking in-case the bank added it on without your knowledge.

View the original article "Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?" at www.darkpolitricks.com

We are using Keynesian economics but giving the money to the banks instead of the people

By Dark Politricks

I saw an interesting interview with Simon Jenkins on This Week last week in which he described how at the moment we are stuck in a liquidity trap and the only solution we have is to print more money in the hope it sorts out the dying victim e.g the UK. As he said:

"the government would be better off giving the billions of pounds it plans to pump into the UK economy to the public in the form of a Christmas bonus." "The columnist damned the government plan to get out of recession, claiming "it's fraud, it's a scam, it's a lie".

However as the Bank of England enters phases of printing money - or quantitative easing as they call it, Simon Jenkins believes that they are giving the money to the wrong people i.e the banks.

He believes that instead of increasing the deficit by the Bank of England buying bonds from the banks and paying interest and all the other funny business our economy actually behaves like we should instead be giving the money direct to the people to stimulate demand in the dead economy before we suffer a lost 20 years like Japan.

Keynesian, yes, but he believes that although printing money could eventually drive up inflation - which we are doing already by printing money to give to the banks.

We should instead be printing it and giving it directly to the citizens and tax payers of the UK. The same people who are now paying for the mistakes of the bankers.

He believes that by doing so it wouldn't be adding to the national debt or increasing the deficit as it wasn't money being borrowed but printed.

By doing this demand in the economy will be created as the people will use the money to buy goods and services which in turn would help businesses who will start to invest and grow for the future.

Whether you like the idea of not what we have at the moment is a case of the government taking tax payers money as well as printing and borrowing it to hand it over to the same banks who caused the financial collapse of 2008 in the hope that they will in turn use it to help businesses.

In fact what these banks are doing are using the money to shore up their empty vaults to meet Basel Capital requirements that they must hold a certain percentage of money in their bank. The fact that nearly all these banks have no money and it's just one big stack of cards waiting to fall down as soon as a country defaults and can't pay back Bank A, who in turn cannot pay back Bank B who in turn asks the government for another bail out is irrelevant.

Anyone who knows how money is created knows that it is created through debt and new money is created every-time someone takes a loan out. That money is then multiplied and leveraged beyond belief even though it doesn't physically exist apart from digits in a computer database.

If there was no debt there would be no money - simple.

It's all one big ponzi scheme anyhow as we all know by now which is run by banksters who launder money for Mexican drug cartels, wide boys who fix Libor interest rates, and interchangeable politicians / bankers who move from one job to the other and then back again.

All as if there was nothing wrong with a politician developing banking policy that helps push millions of Brits over the financial cliff and then go off and work in one of the banks they created policy for once they are finally voted out of office.

Simon believes the politicians and those that demand we must be austere wince at the idea of giving money directly to people as it seems somehow vulgar. As if giving billions of our tax pounds direct to the same people who caused the mess so that they can carry on giving themselves huge wages and bonuses isn't somehow!

So if we are already using a Keynesian economic policy that is being masked as an Austrian one through the use of the words austerity, the cutting of  public services, and all the other spending cuts that the millionaire front bench don't rely on then why don't we try to stimulate demand by giving the money to the people rather than the failed banks and businesses?

We could even tailor this arrangement so that it doesn't seem so "vulgar" by declaring that the money is a once off (or yearly) dividend to all tax payers who helped bail out the banks. 

Banks we basically own anyway. The money could be in the form of a special coupon or voucher that was only redeemable in this country (to stop people putting it in offshore bank accounts or saving it in UK bank accounts).

The voucher would be accepted in any UK based shop or business as legal tender and that company would then be able to redeem it for cash if they so wished from the Treasury by taking it to a bank or a special government office.

To stop people just turning up at banks and transferring the coupons to cash there would be a stipulation that only businesses could redeem the vouchers and only as long as they had a receipt showing the goods or services purchased with said voucher.

Other ways could be created to prevent fraudulent black markets transference we Brits are so good at.

Also we could have a "double the value" scheme in which if  the holder of the coupon bought goods made in the UK (not in China with a made in UK sticker on it!) then they would get the item, good or service at a discount. This would help stimulate the UK manufacturing industry.

Obviously this would only apply to tax payers and not people on the dole or those who have no intention of ever working.

Different sizes of voucher would be created just like paper money so that change could be given in other vouchers and there would be a "use by" date of one year to ensure it was spent within a certain time frame. It would basically exist like a dual currency alongside the existing fiat one we call the pound.

You might not like the idea or the theory for many reasons including it's Keynesian nature but we are already in a double dip recession with no hope of growth on the horizon and a growing national debt due to all the dole money having to be paid out to the public service workers the Tory/Lib Dem coalition have sacked.

If they somehow expected the private sector just to zoom in and suck up all these workers they were poorly mistaken.

Our chancellor George Osborne has failed in what he set out to do - grow the economy and cut the debt so we need some kind of plan.

Giving money to the banks has failed so why not give it to those of us who have basically saved the country anyway?

If 20 million or so people all spending a few billion pounds in the UK economy this year doesn't help it grow at all then we are truly screwed. It's only an idea but one which few people seem willing to consider.

Would we have had the financial crisis if women ran banks?

By Dark Politricks

I have just watched last nights episode of Tom Hartmans "The Big Picture" on Russia Today (watch live online here)

Tom is obviously a Democrat and a liberal but in his last segment something he said I found quite interesting.

Basically the leading founding father Thomas Jefferson  knew the dangers of corporations and unlimited greed and said so in a great speech - abbreviated here:

"I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Thomas Jefferson obviously was aware of the dangers of unlimited corporation power, money and influence and it would be good if some of the Tea Party members who are so fond of the founding fathers actually read more of what they actually said about standing armies, corporations, a Federal bank and undue political influence by lobbyists.

Tom Hartman then followed that up with other Presidential quotes throughout the ages all of which said that there was little need for people to earn so much money that it coultn't be spent in their lifetime.

Not only does it prevent a true meritocracy from occurring - as huge amounts of wealth are passed down the family line like an aristocracy - the thing the founding fathers fought against in the American Revolution. But it leaves people with so much money that could be used for the good of the nation as a whole except many of these super rich people would rather pay no tax at all than do some good for their country. It also showed that high tax rates have no correspondence with job creation, productivity or industrial or technical innovation.

As you can see Tom's main point was that the top rate of tax has dropped from a whopping 94% in the mid 1940's, to 70% during the 1970's and then its current position of 35% and this has no correspondence with the high times of American society.

It does however correspond with huge wealth inequality between the rich and poor. With the richest few percent getting richer and the middle classes basically staying the same. Tickle down economics doesn't seem to work too well it seems.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90% and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed.

The 1950's were a golden time in American society where there were plenty of jobs, houses, affordable education and guess what - the richest few percent (those job creators) didn't up sticks and leave America to another country with lower tax rates. They stayed and paid their taxes.

He also talked about a study that showed that once a person is earning enough money to cover all their basic needs e.g housing, food, travel, clothing etc then earning more money does NOT make them happier.

This reminds me of learning about Maslows hierarchy of needs at college.

Once you have all your basics covered, maybe married or in a relationship and doing a job you like or maybe other activities that fulfill your life then your pyramid of needs are satisfied.

The question then becomes what happens to all those people who have so much money that there is nothing left on earth to do with it.

I am talking about people who earn billions of dollars, fly around in private jets, own multiple huge boats and have garages full of the latest Ferrari's and Porches.

They may play golf all day or do other hobbies but I reckon there is another need that is missing from the pyramid that only comes when all the others are fulfilled and the person has  enough money to achieve or attempt to achieve it plus a certain character trait that is the opposite of altruism - a hunger for power.

Some people are born alpha dogs, others aren't.

Some people in the old days where physical power was all that mattered would have been battered to the floor and trod over like a carpet (people like Bill Gates or the Koch Brothers for instance).

Today things are different and money (lots of it) equals power or the ability to achieve it through various means. This might mean running a huge global corporation or the attempted ownership of countries and even blocks of them (i.e. the EU).

This is what many people believe the Citizens United Ruling has allowed to occur with the super rich trying to "buy" the Presidency through their use of Super Pacs, and huge financial donations.

Whereas Obama is having to rely on lots of small donations and seems to have lost out on those big money givers he had last time around Mitt Romney only needs to attend a couple of functions with the Koch Brothers and he walks away with a few hundred million dollar bills in his pocket.

These ultra rich are not "wealth generators" or "altruistic job creators" for if they were they would say to themselves:

"Well I have more money than I can ever spend in my lifetime. Or leave to my children who will just end up spolit entitled brats who probably won't do a day's work in their lives. With all this money I will do something good for my country and leave a lasting legacy like the Victorian Philantrophists and I don't mind taking a hit on my immense fortune by opening factories and other businesses in the USA and pay the taxes and benefits that come with creating jobs in my country."

"Yes it might cost more than off-shoring all my labour and manufacturing to China or India but as I have more money than I could possibly spend it makes no difference to me if I have to pay slightly more in wages or health benefits if it means that it brings jobs back to desolate American towns like Detroit or New Orleans."

No instead of thinking like this they chose to play king maker and attempt to buy the Presidency with Super Pacs and huge donations to their desired candidate (or the one they are stuck with e.g Mitt Romney)

People with huge amounts of wealth could do immense amounts of good to the people of the earth and I am sure lots of them exist but when the ultimate pyramid slice at the top of Maslows Hierarchy becomes "ultimate power" you end up with Koch Brothers buying Presidencies, Bilderberg, Bohemian Grove and huge experimental projects that are doomed to failure like the Euro.

You also end up with Banksters who have so much money that the only joy they get out of life is making billion dollar gambles with pension funds on the stock market, derivative overloads and the fixing of Libor interest rates. All of which have unintended consequences that affect whole countries and even the world as we are currently experiencing.

You are either this kind of person or you may have an altruistic personality, probably non alpha males, who chose to spend their money on charitable organisations. Building schools and hospitals in under privileged areas and all the sort of things that leave a lasting legacy once they are gone from this earth apart from a mention in a Wikipedia article as one of the banksters who was complicit in the great financial meltdown of 2008.

This leads me to another interesting point in which an ex female banker appeared on the "This Week" programme last Thursday in which she said that due to the "alpha male" culture of bankers in the City of London there was more risk taking and therefore potential for disaster.

If women ran banks and trading floors she reckoned the financial crisis probably would never have happened in the first place.

An interesting thought...