Just like a bad penny turning up, the reports of doom and gloom from the Banking sector began rolling yesterday when NatWest Group reported a £2.1 Billion loss as a result from the Covid Pandemic.
In the coming days and weeks, it is almost certain that other High Street names will report similar losses and provision being made for bad debt, and possibly even more.
Thousands of privately owned businesses were thrown to the fire and wiped out on the basis of little more than a fearful whim by a Government led by politicians who are completely out of their depth.
It is essential for the future of this Country that with many otherwise great businesses gone and others now struggling, the Government does not step in and protect the financial sector from the knock-on effects of those very same losses.
A Bailout for the Banks because of Coronavirus would after all equate to being exactly the same as the Banks and Finance Houses would have received through their income via the repayment of debt in different times when the alternative language being used would chalk the same return up as being a big win.
As I have made clear in Blogs since the beginning of the Lockdown , it is the Government that took the unnecessary decision to shut down the Country as a disproportionate step to fight a Virus that it still does not understand.
The direct and overriding consequence of that shutdown was the sacrifice of businesses and jobs on a mass scale, the size of which has only been kept from public view to date by the range of financial giveaways that the Government has used to give the appearance of propping everything up so far.
It would be vastly unfair and deeply inappropriate for the Government to again – like the Financial Crisis of 2008 – step in and bail these predominantly private interests out. But there is also more.
Whether we like it or not – and in this sense I mean whether your interest is personal, business, political, financial, banking or anything other – we are all heading for and may already be in the preliminary stages of a massive reset of the way that economics and capitalism works that has been overdue not only for our Country, but for the World for a very long time.
Money has become revered and worshipped as a god, with prices of capital items like houses overinflated to the extreme, the wages of top executives eclipsing anything that it would be reasonable for anyone to genuinely need and money or rather credit having become the tool of choice to enslave normal people with the promise of vastly overpriced goods that they don’t need and that on their artificially low wages they could never otherwise hope to afford. The list doesn’t stop there.
By bailing out the Banks again, the Government will insulate the Banking and Financial Sectors from the changes that they should already have embraced. Changes that will see the influence of money brought back to being just a method of payment rather than being an identifier of what life and value in the eyes of others anyone is entitled to, or what basics in life they have to scrimp and save for simply to afford.
There is no value in the argument that the UK has to keep its economy and banking sector in line with the other Countries around the World, as to do so will ensure that millions and millions of people continue to experience the effects of financial and emotional harm. It will only take one high profile Nation to set the example and be the plug that removed will quickly break this very artificial and unscrupulous dyke.
If Boris and Rishi Sunak had shut down repayments, interest and regular ongoing payments to everybody from everybody at the beginning of the Lockdown as they could and should have, we would not be staring in the face of the unfolding economic catastrophe that we now are. Most jobs and businesses would still be able to function and be safe and the banks would have been able to maintain their take after they – like everyone else
Adam Tugwell 