RBS Directors breached their 'fiduciary responsibilities' - Wikileaks

The shocking revelation in this morning's Guardian newspaper, read here, that RBS Directors had breached their 'fidiciary duties' is hugely significant to RBS Shareholders and British Taxpayers involving as it does the whole question of the rule of law in Britain. I quote from the article:

Asked about the importance of a fiduciary responsibility, Simon Morris of law firm CMS Cameron McKenna said: "A fiduciary duty is about honesty. Shareholders give directors the power to run a company and a breach of that fiduciary duty is a reflection of a lapse in that honesty. A breach is also likely to be of interest to the FSA if it is an FSA regulated firm."

The fact that the FSA has only last week abandoned its own investigation of RBS, declaring that there was no wrongdoing at that huge bank, must leave the general public with only one conclusion to draw, that the rot in Britain's politics now goes across all three of the main political parties and extends over and up to the very peak of the British establishment. Even before this news, Britain was beginning to appear ungovernable in the face of the treason by the three main parties over the EU, this condoning and cover-up of criminal acts, which have themselves brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy must surely spur our junior and non-involved MPs into urgent action?

Iceland again and the ongoing banking crisis.

The second day when the Online Times refuses to publish a comment of mine on the Iceland affair (see post below). Less surprisingly today perhaps, as my ire was raised by this nasty slur at the start of Mr Hattersley's article upon which I commented, linked here:

"Icelanders are, by nature, intrinsically unreasonable." Hattersley states in his first sentence.

At least The Economist recognises the significant aspects of the Icelandic situation which The Times chooses to ignore - Read here.

MEANTIME - ANTICIPATING REJECTION - I today copied my exact comment to the Hattersley tripe in The Times, which was as follows:

Mr Hattersley, as has been his habit down the years, is completely wrong on this matter.

The Icelandic refusal, if confirmed in their referendum (wot that?), to repay deposits lost outside normal EU interbank guarantees are showing the way for ordinary people everywhere to eventually escape the results of the banking fiasco and the present government's policy of the printing of vast sums of useless money under QE.

Brown and Darling will eventually be found to have acted illegally in the banking bailout as confirmed by the NAO on the last day of the parliamentary sitting in June last year.

When they are eventually jailed (if such is possible under Scottish Law), or otherwise brought to account, then I feel sure small property owning English taxpayers will be as reluctant as the Icelanders to pick up the tab for the profligate commitments made without benefit of parliamentary approval by these two incompetents.

A blow by blow account of the HBOS Lloyds RBS fiasco is available in these blog archives as well as the illegality of the bailout as stated by the NAO last June. The illegal conspiracy has now been compounded by Parliament's inaction on this matter since its return. The depth to which this law-busting conspiracy has spread across large parts of the British establishment was again illustrated last evening on the Jeff Randall programme when, from Edinburgh please also note, a funds manager refused to explain why he had deliberately thrown millions down the sewer at the behest of Brown and Darling and contrary to the obligations of his office and interests of his policy and share holders.

BNP Paribas Rights Issue

The Wall Street Journal, link, reports this evening:

What a difference six weeks makes.

Back in August, BNP Paribas said it wouldn't repay the French government's €5.1 billion ($8.1 billion) stake in the bank until at least early 2010. Now it is launching a €4.3 billion rights issue to do just that -- in the process leapfrogging a clutch of other European banks, including Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, mulling similar efforts to repay government aid, and Unicredit, which announced a rights issue later Tuesday.

Watch for developments in the Lloyds HBOS and RBS Asset Protection Scheme saga as the next stage of the credit crunch looks set to hit removing the world from the relative calm of the phony recession.

Read John Redwood on Quantitative Easing from here.

Returning value to money is the only cure, everything attempted over the past 25 months has been working in exactly the wrong direction.

Britain is beyond rotten

The leading article in The Times today is headlined "Something Rotten" it may be read from here.

The topic is the pension and tax arrangements of the outgoing head of the 70 per cent now tax payer owned Scottish Bank RBS. It describes an outrage.

The Daily Telegraph meanwhile has a report of up to 1,200 unnecessary deaths at one single NHS hospital, read here. This should be no surprise, on 18th January 2008 The Guardian reported that 17,000 unnecessary deaths had been caused in the NHS, read it here.

I started the New Year on 3rd January this year with a post, linked here, on the NHS which began as follows:

A New Year needs a new start!

The NHS lies at the root of Britain's now nearly terminal problems. If individuals will not take responsibility for their own health and well being they will not take responsibility elsewhere.

The next day The Sunday Times carried a report of the NHS being in the organ sales business, read my post from here.

Look at any area of Society in England, neglect imposed by the incompetent Scottish thugs who largely govern, unemployment figures rose today to 2.029 million yet Lord Mandelson (three times the subject of scandals over questionable dealings yet ennobled and running huge swathes of government policy) denying on TV that job centres in England have closed when all know they have and that millions more English citizens now fear for their jobs not just their lives in run- down and shabby health services. Money being printed by the BoE will further reduce the real amounts available for expenditure whilst providing a fleeting charade of passing prosperity - no wonder University Chancellors have divined that they will soon need to at least double tuition fees.

The IMF today confirmed that Britain's recession will be the worst in the world in my view simply because it has the worst Government and zero opposition!

Yes there is no opposition under David Cameron while Government Ministers lie and demonstrate their ignorance in almost every area of their supposed responsibilities.

Sir Fred Goodwin is a shameful example of Britain, but scratch the surface and there is far worse within.

What value an "unwanted asset"?

Bloomberg has issued a report based upon Britain's Sunday press ramblings from which comes the following:

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc plans to divide itself into a “good bank” and a “bad bank” and cut costs by more than 1 billion pounds ($1.44 billion) a year to help it recover from the biggest loss in British corporate history, The Sunday Times said, without citing anyone.

The cost-reduction measures will result in about 20,000 job losses, with more than half in the U.K, the newspaper said. The Sunday Telegraph reported RBS, the largest government-controlled U.K. bank, will establish a “non-core” subsidiary which will hold 300 billion pounds of “unwanted assets.” etc., etc.

Apart from sniffily proving the price of the newspapers in Britain are again this Sunday worth considerably less than the trash they pass on as free gifts what else may we learn from this report.

Possibly that the real loss of the taxpayers for RBS can at last be realistically estimated at 300 billion pounds. Consider this scenario - if I purchase a packet of plastic cutlery for one pound, find I have no use for it and store it unopened it might possibly at some future moment be worth something, how much can only be assessed were I to be lucky enough to find a willing buyer.

Were I to accidentally sit on the package and break the contents, they remain unused but their future value becomes even less certain no-one would believe they were now worth the original purchase price - most would put their value at zero.

So it is with all unwanted assets. The price paid is meaningless especially when preceded by the adjective "unwanted" which assigns a value of zero.

Who cared what was originally paid, only the robbed taxpayer who apparently had them transferred at the original cost paid.

Leave the debts in Scotland, that is where they rightfully belong! Losses should have been left with the original shareholders who at least had a limitation to their liability up to the value of their shares and to the capitalisation of the bank. Nothing more, how can the Scottish Brown and Darling have contrived to extend this to 300,000,000,000,000 pounds for mainly English taxpayers?