The object of this jibe was, of course, Alexis Tsipras, whom even The Guardian newspaper described as 

…leader of the radical left Syriza party, [who] is demanding a renegotiation of Greece’s bailout package.

What is it that Syriza and Mr Tsipras have actually said they want, which qualifies them for being described as ‘radical’ and ‘cranky’?

Well Mr Tsipras is on record as saying that if given a mandate to set up a government, he would set up a Debt Commission to investigate the legality of the various debts the Greek Nation and its banking system have accumulated. Is this radical and cranky?

For those who may  not know what a Debt Commission is, it is a panel drawn from a wide range of groups within society who will analyze all the country’s debts, one by one, to see if they were taken on legally and for whose benefit.  Those taken on legally and for the good of those who are paying – IE the Greek people, are deemed legally binding. Those which were done fraudulently or taken on to benefit those doing the deal, to the detriment of those left with the bill are considered Odious or worse and are torn up without further discussion.

Is this so radical? The banks and the leaders of the nations whose banks might be effected by the process think so. But is it? Is it radcial and cranky to think there might have been some fraudulent loans made, some corrupt kick-backs and pocket-lining deals done? Is it cranky to think some of Greece’s political class could have lined their own pockets and the pockets of those with whom they were cosily doing business behind the curtain of ‘confidentiality’? Is it radical to think some of the Global Banks might have done deals which were never going to help the Greek people but would line the pockets of the bankers? We have a long public record of evidence that virtually all the global banks have engaged in widespread and intentional fraud.

So is it so radical to want to see the details of a bill that other people, untrustworthy people, ran up, but which you have been left to pay?  A Debt Commission is no more than asking for an itemized bill.

Does it make you a dangerous radical if upon receipt of a huge bill at a restaurant, you ask for an itemized bill? Is it cranky to want to know what you are paying for?

The process of a Debt Commission has international legal standing and has been done before.

70% of the votes cast in the Greek election, though not giving a majority to any one party, were cast against austerity measures and the parties who advocated them. So there is a clear mandate from the people of Greece. Are the people themselves and the mandate they seem to have voted for, radical and cranky? Well  only if you regard democracy itself as a dangerous intrusion of the Great Unwashed into realms that should be reserved for their betters. It is a small detail of Democracy that I think our present rulers overlook, that Democracy IS radical and allows for radical decisions. And most important of all, the democratic decisions of a free and sovereign people, take precedence over ALL other agreements and contracts. The people and their democratically expressed will are, and absolutely must always be, supreme. Contract law, the law governing private agreements between private entities,  is NOT and MUST NOT ever become superior to the will of the People. The day it is, Democracy dies. Yet that is precisely what our leaders and the global bankers are trying to insist upon.

A free people must have the right to change their mind or Democracy is dead.

And that is our present impasse. The banks and our present rulers have agreed between them that the decisions made, not just by elected leaders, but also those collosal decisions taken by unelected ‘experts’ at central banks and financial quangos, to print or borrow money in order to bail out the private banks and their private debts – decision made without any recourse to the people-expected-to-pay (the public) and often without even a public discussion, that those decisions should be legally binding and irreversably above the will of the people.

If we allow this then we have allowed a coup, as surely as if it had been carried out with tanks and soldiers rather than computer models and ‘experts’.

The problem in Greece, is is that a Debt Commission requires time. And during the time it would take for such a Commission to do its work, Greece would need financial support .

It sounds reasonable to say – why should we – those who have been supporting you, continue to support you while you run your Debt Commission. Germany and its tax payers will balk. But is it not also quite reasonable for the Greeks to say we would like our itemized bill if you please and do not feel it is right to be told we must pay NOW, in full,  and never mind the details.

The reality is our banks – those in France Germany, the UK and America, have been caught engaged in fraud and vastly stupid and greedy dealings. Our regulators knew and were largely complicit. During the time Greece was supposed to have been hiding and lying about its debts – it was also under ‘Special scrutiny’ by the European regulator Eccofin

Here is a press release of the agreement between Ecofin and the Greek government in 2007.

Greece’s fiscal deficit was reduced below 3% of GDP in a “credible and sustainable manner,” the EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) announced, closing the excessive deficit procedure it opened with regard to Greece in 2004.

Ecofin knew about the currency swap deals Greece had done and was doing with JP Morgan and Goldman. Deals which they later described as how Greece ‘hid’ its real level of debts. Debts were certainly hidden. But not from Ecofin. Not from the banks who now claim they are owed money. They were indeed hidden …from those who are now told they MUST PAY and without seeing what it is they are to pay for.

I would say that is what is radical and dangerous.

It is imperative therefore that we expose the bankers’ narrative for the strait jacket of self-serving lies it is, and that we have our own.

The bankers’ version has the advantage that it is already accepted and endorsed by all wings of our political class, that the mainstream media lap up anything the super wealthy and their bankers say, and of course that the banking lobby has more heads than a hydra.

What is their version? Let’s look at one of the more recently created lobby groups the Job Creators Alliance.  According to their web site they were set up by ten of America’s present or former CEOs  for ‘…the defence of the free enterprise system…in the court of public opinion.” The web site goes on to say that it is their aim to “educate the public and policy makers…” and “…shape the national agenda….”

What is that agenda? Well its made quite clear on their web site in an article called “Markets don’t fail” in which it is declared that,

…the onset of the financial crisis three or four years ago was largely due in the US and the UK to excessive demand for mortgages from people who couldn’t afford them.

There, simple as that. Nothing to do with the banks or bankers, nothing to do with robo-signing, selling CDOs which were designed to fail so others could profit by betting against them. Nothing to do with banks lying about the worth of their assets or having a fundamentally stupid and unstable funding model. Nothing to do with insane leverage levels or ‘To Big To Fail’ institutions gambling with client’s money. None of that is to be allowed in to the public discussion. The entire discussion must be, from the bankers point of view, carefully managed.  The discussion, in so far as the public are to be allowed to partake at all, must be carefully shaped and steered, and above all, the assumptions from which it starts and by which its eventual outcome will be determined, must be set and controlled by the Bankers.

Thus it’s worth noting that the article I quoted from the Job Creators Alliance, in America, was also posted on the Adam Smith Insititute in the UK. A ‘think tank’ whose aim is, “… to promote libertarian and free market ideas.”   The  Insititute was very influential in the Thatcher Privatizations and has close links with the libertarian and Free Market US think tank, The Heritage Foundation.

The author of the article, Mr Jan Boucek, is not from either The Job Creators Alliance nor the Adam Smith Institute but from a company called  ECD which describes itself as ,

Mr Boucek is described as, “…an expert in international business communication and the finance media. He has extensive experience in message development, editing skills, coaching and personal development.” In other words he is a spin doctor.  Now anyone can write an article for another organization whose aims they share, but it does change how  we read his opinions when we know who he works for. None of this, however,  is mentioned by either The Adam Smith Insitute or the Job Creators Alliance. It seems to me there is a campaign but that those running it would prefer we not see it as such.

So the bank narrative is that the credit crisis was due to people demanding mortgages they couldn’t afford.  However, are ordinary people in a position to ‘demand’ a mortgage from a bank? It’s like that other phrase much used and approved of by the banks, ‘…people took on debts they couldn’t afford’. ‘Demand’ and ‘Took’ both try to make ordinary people the culprits and the banks the vicitms. But can ordinary people ‘demand’ and then ‘take’ a mortgage from a bank?

Al Capone took money from banks. You and I can demand all we like, but we can’t ‘take’ a loan unless the bank offers it. The fact is, the loans people couldn’t afford were  offered, advised and approved by the banks. It is the bank’s line of business to know if someone can afford a loan or not. That is what bankers do for a living. The bankers knew they were offering and ‘extending’ loans to people above what those people could really afford but did so anyway. And the bankers above them in the bonus pyramid approved.  Our guilt and greed was to ‘accept’ loans that were unwise and unstable. But we did not ‘take’ them from innocent bankers against their better judgement and advice.

Nevertheless the Bankers narrative of events is that markets don’t fail only people. Of course there have been some difficult cases of bank failure and even some cases of outright fraud. How to deal with those? Ah, well there we have the “One Bad Apple’ argument, which is usually teamed with the, ‘now under new management’, message development strategy.

One Bad Apple is from the same stable as ‘rogue trader’. Both are important strategies to ensure that any potentially damaging criticism of the system itself is deflected on to a lone or rogue element which we can then be assured, has been replaced.  Phew! Problen identified, corrected and now , if you please ladies and gentlement, just move along quietly.

And the ‘liberal’ press readily swallows both strategies. The New York Times ran an article in October 2011 in which it talked about how Citigroup had been found guilty of fraud and

“.. had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust.”

As the article said, “It doesn’t get any more immoral than this.” But then just one paragraph later the author reassures us not to worry because that that was then but,

“Citigroup is under new and better management now,..”

Of course you might remember Goldman Sachs did almost the same thing and had to pay $550 Million to settle its case. But importantly for the banks and bankers I cannot say Goldman was ‘guilty’ of anything because it was not found guilty. Instead it was allowed to settle the fraud case with a $550 million fine which is far less than it would have made from its trading practices.  Far more importantly, the settlement allowed Goldman to walk away “neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing”. A careful peice of ‘message management’.

Now is Goldman under new and better management? NO. But no one mentions that. Just as they don’t mention that Deutsche Bank is also up on fraud charges. So is Bank of America. All the big four accountant firms were recently or still are under investigation. I could go on.

But instead I’ll just quote US liberal magazine Mother Jones from December 2011 which said,

“…the ‘few bad apples’ argument really is worth acknowledging…”

So the bankers’ sanitized narrative is that markets don’t fail, people do and when a bank or a banker is caught doing something fraudulent or immoral it is just a bad apple which is neatly replaced. Imperative is the message that there is NOTHING intrinsically wrong with the banking/finance system as it is now constituted. THAT is their central concern and version of reality.

The other side of their strategy, which I suggest we”ll see more of in the coming months, is to suggest those who oppose them are suspect or even dangerous. Note how Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, took time before flying to Davos to give an interview in which he said, that anti-banking sentiment was,

“…a form of discrimination that should be stopped.”

How to stop it? Well one suggestion came from US lobbying firm, Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford in a memo sent to the American Bank’s Association on how to discredit the Occupy Movement. According to Reuters,

The four-page memo outlined how the firm could analyze the source of protesters’ money, as well as their rhetoric and the backgrounds of protest leaders.

“If we can show they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent, it will undermine their credibility in a profound way,” said the memo,

Now the American Banks Association (ABA) was quick to say the suggestion had not been taken up. The banks have tried to suggest that this was an unsollicted, even perhaps a ‘rogue’ memo. In a word – bollocks.  Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford are not fly by night chancers who send off-the-wall suggestions on spec. They are a Washington institution. They are very, very well connected. The ABA are long standing clients. Their business is lobbying. They know their clients. They know what they are thinking, what they need and what they might like to hear. Memo’s don’t get sent out to America’s bank lobby on spec by the work experience intern.

The memo would not exist at all and certainly not suggest what it does if  the partners of Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford did not think this was already in their clients minds.

So I think we now have a rough outline of the narrative the bankers want endorsed and promoted. I think we also have an inkling of the measures they are going to deploy against those who oppose them.

That’s ‘Them’. What about ‘Us’ and our narrative?

Well here I find I agree with Jamie Dimon on one thing. He said generalized banker bashing was wrong. I agree. Blunt generalizations are not good enough. What we need are stout reasons that can be sharpened to a fine point and then used to stab (metaphorically only of course) deserving bankers through the heart.  Fortunately there are many such reasons and an almost equal number of thoroughly deserving bankers.

But I will leave that till part 2. Picking up the boys from school now beckons.