Last October as the full scale of the banking melt-down was emerging, I wrote:

Given the obvious toxicity of these portfolios, it seems that greed must have triumphed mightily over discretion, now that it has become clear how widely and on what an enormous scale these hopelessly dud securities were being accepted. Immoral certainly, fraudulent probably, and criminally incompetent, the culprits must be identified and chastised, in the UK and in the US.

Now the pathetic acquisitiveness of an elite crowd of ‘Masters of the Universe’ has toppled the whole global economy, there must be no fudging, no special cases, no loss of scent on paper trails, no obfuscating for the sake of keeping the wheels turning. For anyone who deliberately profited from the selling of impossible, fraudulently processed mortgages, from Iowa to Tyne & Wear, there must be no mercy.

Yesterday it emerged that one of the principle players in this debacle, Sir Fred Goodwin, go-getting, envelope-pushing, debt-mountain architect is not just NOT going to answer for his criminal incompetence, we, the British tax payers are going to pay him £16 million to be going on with.

The insane injustice of it, and his evident complete lack of moral or ethical agenda represents a distillate of all that was rotten about the wild west, unregulated banking era which has brought about the world-wide misery of our current profound collapse.

I haven’t seen Goodwin’s contract, but it seems likely that in return for his massive remuneration, he had to offer some kind of profitable performance, which he manifestly hasn’t delivered.

Of course he shouldn’t be paid.

Let him sue, while we strip him of his knighthood.

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