Hostis humani generis

Barclays Captital announced obscene profits this morning. There is unfortunately no other word for it.

Pirates' lair 

The investment bank made £6bn in 2010 and the income of its bankers rose to 43% of Barclays revenues, compared with a mere 33% in 2009. Average pay per employee at Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Barclays, rose to £236,000 from £191,000 last year.

The revelation that Barclays managed to up the overall percentage of revenue paid to these venal parasites, while still paying lip service to Project Merlin, has proved yet again -- if further proof were needed -- that sucessive governments in this country are either unable or unwilling to curb the banks’ rapine (possibly both).  Project Merlin is the toothless deal between ministers and bankers under which the latter are supposed to lend more to UK businesses and pay themselves less.

But then, if The Deptford Croppy was a betting man, he would probably be putting good money on many government brokers of this blatant deception taking seats on the boards of these very same banks as soon as they leave public office.

We are continually being told that financial services are the backbone of this country’s economy as if that’s a good thing. We are then told in the same breath that if we impose too stringent a regulatory regime, the banks will spit the dummy, up stumps and decamp en masse to somewhere the government is less worried about the exploitation of its proles.

Let’s take a closer look at this stupendous lie propagated so helpfully by the established media on behalf of the banks’ press officers. Well, from a pure risk point of view, what is being sold as a UK strength is actually the huge structural weakness which is one of the primary causes of this current depression in the first place.  If you’ve ever had the dubious privilege of talking to a City investment manager, you will know that they all bleat the same mantra of ‘risk diversification’. That’s eggs and baskets or hedging your bets to us financial ingénues.

If financial services represent too high a proportion of the income generated by UK plc then surely, as a good capitalist, I would be looking to spread my bets.  If the banks want to go, let them.

And that brings us on to the hollow threats of the bankers themselves. I have often heard at first hand the brays of these empty sociopaths in the City's champagne bars: the cocky assertions that all they need is a desk and a laptop to start trading and making even more money than before.  To that I’ve only got this to say: If they coulda, they woulda.

Having covered financial services as a journalist, I know exactly how much their trading systems cost to install and maintain. Moreover, I also understand how utterly dependent they are on their proprietary trading platforms and software. For the banks to move in most cases, the costs would be ruinous.

The banks nevertheless continue with the charade and no-one in the established media ever seriously questions the substance of their bullying inducements. The UK is kept on its toes with heavy hints of Hong Kong removal men in the offing but it is a poor poker bluff or more accurately; it is a lie. Aside from the massive logistical outlay, there would be prohibitive costs in terms of recruitment, severance payments and staff relocation expenses and the banks are well aware of this.

Then there are the legal costs. New compliance regimes to be created; whole new cultures to bribe and corrupt and none of that comes cheap.  If the banks are preparing for a move closer to the Chinese markets, they will do that whether we like it or not. But all of this fails to take into account the social cachet of living at the top of the food-chain in a country so slavishly beholden to hierarchy and class distinction. As we all know, even down here in the cheap seats; there are few cities in the world quite like London if one has plenty of money.

Wealth generated by banks might look good on the bottom line of an executive summary of the nation’s balance of payments. But the largely unarticulated truth is that the massive corporate and personal wealth created by this industry is used to bolster and maintain a tiny, socially useless oligarchy. The much vaunted trickle-down from this influx has been derisory.

Their very presence is an affront to the general populace who profess the aspiration of a just society. The salaries and bonuses of these cankers also add another shameful dimension to the country’s bottom line stats as wages in the rest of society are falling. With every gulp of oxygen these people steal in the UK, they are widening the gulf between the rich and the poor.

Hostis humani generis is an admiralty and international law term, it means “enemy of mankind”. Essentially, this quaint latinate euphemism for piracy includes transnational criminals who are held to be beyond legal protection.

Surely it’s a mantle that bankers would wear well:  international privateers on the high seas of world finance; an arrogant and ruthless clique of risk-addicted sociopaths who hold themselves to be above the law.

Almost certainly enemies of mankind...