MAIL COMMENT: Bankers must put our interests first

By MAIL COMMENT
Updated:

Hector Sants

A culture of ostentatious wealth is epitomised by FSA Chief Executive Hector Sants

There may still be an eerie sense of normality in many High Streets and offices, but don't be deceived. Yesterday's national output figures foreshadow job losses and company closures on a truly alarming scale.

In only three months, our economy has shrunk by a frightening 0.5 per cent  -  the first negative growth in 16 years and the worst figure recorded since 1990.

So much for Gordon Brown's boast that he'd put an end to 'boom and bust'.

The City has already passed its panic-stricken verdict. Meanwhile, the plunging pound threatens to send us even deeper into a recession that may last two years.

So what can be done to ease the pain? One classic way to stimulate a flagging economy is to cut taxes. Another is to boost spending on public works.

But with Government borrowing already heading for £100billion, aren't we nearing the point where we can't go on heaping burdens on future taxpayers?

Of course, there is a third tried and tested method of keeping an economy alive: a hefty cut in interest rates to help mortgage payers and businesses ride the storm.

But make no mistake: rate cuts will be useless if banks fail to pass them on to ordinary borrowers.

Never has the financial world been under a stronger obligation to put the interests of the nation first, now that hard-pressed taxpayers have bailed them out to the tune of hundreds of billions.

Yet even since the bail-out, banks have been mercilessly squeezing businesses, in their unseemly scramble to look after themselves.

They must learn that we will no longer tolerate their culture of ostentatious, undeserved wealth  -  epitomised by financial watchdog Hector Sants's £3million extension to his home (which brings his tally of bathrooms to nine!).

This is the man, remember, whose job is to regulate the City's excesses. He just doesn't get it, does he? Do any of them?

Well, they must be made to get it. This crisis was very largely of the bankers' own making  -  and the heaviest possible responsibility lies on them to help us through it.

No more two nations, Them and Us. They must realise we're in this together.

The yacht-hoppers

Like teeth being pulled, the murky details of Lord Mandelson's freeloading friendship with Russia's richest wheeler dealer are slowly being dragged into the open.

Isn't it time the former EU Commissioner came fully clean about his links with Oleg Deripaska, on whose £80million yacht he stayed in the summer?

At their cosy 'social gatherings' (stretching back, we now learn, at least as far as 2004), did they discuss Mr Deripaska's aluminium or insurance businesses  -  or his plans for a £5billion haven for the super-rich in Montenegro?

These are three matters, after all, in which an EU Commissioner might be very useful in greasing the wheels for an outsider.

Peter Mandelson
Oleg Deripaska

More details of Peter Mandelson's relationship with Oleg Deripaska (right) have emerged

Lord Mandelson must clear the air  -  and the sooner the better, if he wants his third chance in the Cabinet to last.

Meanwhile, the Mail has a suggestion for two other yacht-hopping politicians.

There may not be the same whiff of sulphur about David Cameron or George Osborne as they lead the high life at the expense of billionaires while posing as men of the people. But that's only because they have no power (yet).

If they are ever to have it, wouldn't it be a good start if these two rich MPs started paying the full whack for their own flights and holidays  -  like the millions or ordinary Britons they aspire to lead?

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