| Author | Message | | gchq | | Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:31 pm Post subject: 9,000 jobs go at RBS |
| 9,000 JOBS TO GO AT RBS
On the day when we awoke to a think-tank telling us Gordon Brown will fight the next election with over 3 million people unemployed, well, up comes our old friend RBS announcing 9,000 job losses worldwide.
That means about 4,500 in the UK. The unions say that's almost double what they were expecting. Naturally it would be illuminating to get Sir Fred's view on this. For a man who says he's done nothing wrong he's continuing to be shy. Sooner or later he will surface of course...
As union official Rob MacGregor put it: "These employees are totally blameless for the current position which RBS is in, yet they are paying for the mistakes at the top of the bank." he said.
A reference no doubt to the £20bn taxpayer bailout and the UK record loss of £24.1bn in 2008.
From Channel 4 | |  | | Anglo Thug | | Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:53 pm Post subject: |
| They mean 9,000 proper jobs, the jobs of people who have slaved for these wankers at 50% of the going commercial rate. The worker is simply a balance sheet entry. If profits are down, trim the balance sheet, staff first. Profits up? Keep them and pay them a pittance. Remember, the only people who make any REAL money (as opposed to fantasy bubbles) for these banksters are the counter staff and post room workers and couriers and clearance crew, and so on, the people who interact with the public and support the public. All the other stuff is imaginary, but didn't they do well in terms of bonuses? Those were real enough. There will be payback and it will be severe. People can take a lot these days but we are reaching the threshold of the ridiculous.
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Please sign the petition to prosecute War Criminal Tony Blair | | | | Anglo Thug | | Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 9:13 pm Post subject: |
| "Tough decisions", they say. Designed to "Pay back the taxpayer, and if that means cutting jobs, so be it." FUCKER! What do you think happens when a worker ends up on the dole? That's right, the taxpayer picks up the bill. Nothing changes, you slimy bastards. How stupid do you think people are?
It's a fair cop, I agree, they're pretty stupid alright!
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Please sign the petition to prosecute War Criminal Tony Blair | | | | gchq | | Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:47 pm Post subject: |
| | AT wrote: | | That's right, the taxpayer picks up the bill. |
..and when the still working taxpayer is seeing 100% of earned income go in tax and STILL there isn't enough! What then? | | | | Anglo Thug | | Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:53 pm Post subject: |
| | Quote: | | ..and when the still working taxpayer is seeing 100% of earned income go in tax and STILL there isn't enough! What then? |
You'd be hoping a thoroughly pissed off and energised population, in other words an effective enemy of the state. But you never know, the majority might be bought off by a few posters or a TV advert - it's happened so many times before. Perhaps there is no longer a limit to the amount of piss that can be extracted from the average guy.
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Please sign the petition to prosecute War Criminal Tony Blair | | | | gchq | | Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:51 pm Post subject: Is a green nation a flight of fancy? |
| From Channel 4 News
The true cost of bailing out the banks is beginning to emerge - this is money spent, not just borrowed. Faisal Islam will have the figures, and he'll also be looking at the government's own major announcement today, which seems almost to amount to reinventing the wheel. Britain, once dependent for 19 per cent of its GDP on financial services, is now to be re-tooled as a hi-tech green technological nation according to Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson. A flight of fancy or actually deliverable? We'll be talking with Lord Mandelson at 7pm.
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Read Faisal's new blog
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Find out what's really going on in the world of finance and have your say on the economic issues of the day at our economics correspondent's new blog: www.channel4.com/faisalislam | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 6:22 pm Post subject: |
| From Channel 4 News
MORE QUANTITATIVE EASING
But are we much more likely to lead on the frightening revelation that the Bank of England's having to print another tranche of money.
It has already used up the first £75bn that it printed, but it seems the economy stills need another dose of 'quantitative easing'.
At the same time the morass that was HBOS and is now Lloyds is descending into still worse mayhem.
All the worst projections have turned out to have undershot and the state of the thing is worse than anyone predicted.
Its toxic debts appear to know few bounds and the share price has consequently gone through the floor. | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 4:35 am Post subject: |
| From The Times
June 2, 2009
Gordon Brown and Treasury accused on banking crisis
Patrick Hosking, Financial Editor
A fateful decision 12 years ago by Gordon Brown, egged on by envious Treasury officials, led to the catastrophic failure of UK regulators to anticipate and prevent the banking crisis, according to a former Bank of England director and City grandee.
Sir Martin Jacomb, a former chairman of Prudential and director of Barclays, criticised the Prime Minister for his “disastrous” decision while Chancellor to strip the Bank of responsibility for banking supervision and hand it to the newly created Financial Services Authority.
Sir Martin, who was a director of the Bank for ten years until 1995, also claimed that the decision was “at least partly the outcome of long-harboured but unspoken jealousy and suspicion” at the Treasury.
He said: “The Treasury has long been envious of the Bank of England. Viewed from Whitehall, the Bank seems grander, with a long and splendid reputation, particularly internationally, and with relationships with other central banks which give it a special air of authority.”
Mr Brown and the Treasury deliberately split the responsibilities so as to “divide and rule”, Sir Martin added, saying that the Treasury had felt bruised and misled by the Bank over an earlier scandal — the failure and rescue of Johnson Matthey Bank.
He said that Eddie George, the Bank Governor at the time, was “far from content” but too loyal to resort to public debate.
The ultimate responsibility was Mr Brown's, Sir Martin said. “His desire for ultimate control was decisive; and it ended in failure.” The Bank lost its influence over the banks and could no longer obtain detailed information on their behaviour in order to make well-informed macro-prudential decisions.
Sir Martin argued in a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies that the Bank of England should take over the FSA and create a new body, the Systemic Policy and Risk Committee, which would be ultimately responsible for financial stability.
The Treasury responded last night that the Bank had continued to have a role in macro-prudential supervision after 1997, both through its financial stability division and membership of the Tripartite Committee, the body of Bank, FSA and Treasury officials that is responsible for financial stability.
Separately, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee argued that responsibility for macro-prudential supervision — the setting of general rules and standards governing banks to foster stability — should be given back to the Bank from the FSA.
The tripartite arrangements had failed, Lord Vallance, its chairman, said, “in part because it was not clear who was in charge in a crisis and because not enough attention was paid to macro-prudential supervision”. The committee said that a new policy lever should be introduced to counter the pro-cyclicality in the banking sector. This could be the level of loan-to-value ratios or capital requirements and the Bank could adjust these, just as it sets interest rates, to damp down the credit cycle.
It also suggested:
— Compulsory reporting of credit default swap trades.
— Forcing credit-rating agencies to buy and hold the bonds they rate.
— Forcing banks to pre-fund the depositor lifeboat rather than run it on a pay-as-you-go basis.
— Allowing bank non-executive directors to serve for longer than ten years and to have their own executive.
— Encouraging bank supervisors to liaise with bank auditors.
— Greater oversight of overseas bank branches by UK authorities.
The Treasury is due to publish a paper this month giving its views on regulatory reform.
[url=http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6410087.ece[/url] | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:59 pm Post subject: The fall out from Sir Fred's pension |
| The fall out from Sir Fred's pension
BBC
18 Jun 2009
In a villa on a private estate near Cannes on the French Riviera, Sir Fred Goodwin has been doing more than just enjoying the sunshine and escaping the people who vandalised his Edinburgh home, and car, earlier this year.
Sir Fred's Edinburgh home was
vandalised in March
He, or at least his lawyers, have been busy negotiating with the bank he used to run, the now government-controlled RBS.
The deal they have agreed will see him return half the increase in his pension pot that the former directors awarded him last year.
The increase in his pension had been seen by RBS as a price that was right and proper to keep Sir Fred on board while he handed over responsibilities to his successor.
It meant that at the age of 50 he would take with him a full pension that he would otherwise have enjoyed only by working to the age of 60.
He retired in January this year on a pension of £703,000 a year. However, he later converted some of his £16.6m pension pot into a tax-free lump sum of £2.7m, in exchange for a lower annual pension.
After this latest deal, his annual pension will now fall from £555,000 to £342,500.
High earners
However, Sir Fred's pension saga has probably affected all higher rate tax payers.
Some observers think that the revelations about RBS's generous pension arrangements for its former chief executive led directly to one of the most surprising aspects of this year's Budget.
That was the proposal that from 2011, anyone earning more than £150,000 should have to pay as much as 30% tax on any contributions made to their pension schemes by their employers.
"I think he made it possible for the government to treat high earners as fair game on pensions," said Tom McPhail of financial advisers Hargreaves Lansdown.
"His pension arrangement and the public reaction to that created a climate where the government thought it fair to penalise high earners' pensions," he added.
How it happened
It is worth recalling just how Sir Fred was able to build up such a huge pension after just 10 years at RBS.
When he joined in 1998 aged 40, the bank agreed, in effect, to pay him not so much a pension when he retired, more a salary for life.
All this was revealed when RBS wrote to the Treasury Select Committee earlier this year, to explain how his pension had been set up.
It revealed correspondence in which the bank told Sir Fred how it would guarantee that he eventually retired on two-thirds of his final salary.
To achieve this it decided firstly to treat him as if he had been a member of the bank's final salary pension scheme since the age of 20.
That gave him an extra 20 years membership of the non-contributory scheme.
It also decided to pay into the scheme at double the normal rate during his years of his actual employment with the bank.
Bridging the gap
A letter to Sir Fred from the bank's group director of human resources, Neil Roden, summarised the arrangements.
"Benefits will be calculated assuming a notional start date of your 20th birthday," he said.
"In particular this means that if you remain with the group until age 60 your pension will be two thirds of your full basic salary," he added.
One problem at the time of this letter was that Inland Revenue rules limited anyone's pensionable salary in a tax-approved pension scheme to just £97,200, two-thirds of which amounted to just £64,800 a year.
However, his basic salary in 2003 was now £898,000, entitling him already to a pension of £334,000 according to the bank's annual report.
To bridge the huge gap between the Revenue limits, and the pension already promised, RBS made a number of further commitment's to Sir Fred.
"Benefits will be calculated ignoring the effect of the earnings cap (currently £97,200 a year)," Mr Roden wrote.
To do this the bank promised to pay the extra money to Sir Fred directly from its own funds, or via a pension scheme common at the time for highly paid executives known as a FURBS (a funded unapproved retirements benefits scheme).
Contractual entitlement
To emphasise that the pension would, if necessary be paid by the bank directly, and not by the pension scheme, the bank wrote:
"The benefits set out in this letter... are a contractual entitlement and, to the extent they are not met from the Group fund or a FURBS, the Group has a legal obligation to pay these benefits to you."
A later letter from 2004 underlined the bank's commitment.
"If these arrangements prove inadequate the Group will still be responsible for providing the full entitlements," it said.
Things became even better for Sir Fred in 2007.
If he eventually decided to take 25% of his pension pot as a lump sum, then any money from either a FURBS or from the bank would land him with a 40% tax bill.
So in further letters the bank simply agreed to pay any such tax bill for him.
What is not known is if Sir Fred negotiated hard for these pension promises, or if the bank's directors simply thought they were a good idea to retain a top man who deserved all he would get.
But they have shone a light on the extent to which the pension arrangements of the very highly paid are, in fact, more valuable then their salaries.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) recently revealed it expects the number of higher rate taxpayers to shrink by a million in just two years, because of the recession.
It seems the details of Sir Fred's pension package did not pass unnoticed as Alistair Darling pondered ways to raise more tax from the rich in his last Budget.
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | | | | Diceros | | Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:46 pm Post subject: |
| Let's face it - gchq- would'nt you have liked to be , , wish you were in Sir Fred's position. ?
cheers. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
