Open letter to Russell Brand from RBS worker

[Schoolaroundthecorner]

So apparently Russell Brand stormed into RBS London headquarters and decided to hassle employees about their pay and bonuses. Now I know Russell is on a crusade at the moment against capitalism and bankers might have seemed an obvious target but he's really getting annoying now (I know plenty of people found him irritating already....). I'm not a banker, not working in a job with big bonuses but I have sympathy with these workers, many of whom are probably not the fat cats he paints them as. In particular I thought this open letter made it clear how self-aggrandising the whole stunt was and effectively punctured Russell's new 'man of the people' persona.

thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/russell-brand-open-letter-1839456-Dec2014/

I think the banker who wrote the letter is a selfish little toad. His lunch got cold. So what? People aren't getting lunch, including children and the disabeld, because we bailed out the banks and yet they are still paying out massive bonuses.

I actually like the fact that Russell is speaking up for the disabled, I'm disabeld, and I can't hear anyone else giving us a mention!

exactly what I thought. How petty - how pathetic ...boo hoo, his lunch got cold - so what, in the larger context of things. Idiot.

telsa …. Re your ”It is a complete joke to suggest that the taxpayer will receive the profits back. They never will, and anyway this betrays a complete lack of economic understanding on Isitmebut's part. What is profit? Does it grow on trees? No, it is extracted surplus value, that is to say also stolen from us the workers. Get real.”

May I suggest that your rather rude/ignorant post is confusing economics with the RBS bailout, the subject of Mr Brands film, the subject of this thread.

The economic affect on the masses of a banking/financial collapse, which morphed into the Great Recession, did so with no individual bank to blame - and much of it due to Anglo Saxon governments systemically relaxing bank lending controls – in sub prime lending for political reasons in the U.S. and government instructions to their newly formed financial regulator (the FSA), here.

“Labour's lax regulation of the City contributed to RBS collapse – watchdog”
www.theguardian.com/business/2011/dec/12/labour-regulations-city-rbs-collapse

The ‘cost’ of the financial market collapse, and the following economic recession, is indeed incalculable, but re getting our RBS money back;

The cost to the taxpayer of RBS, is in the part privatization of RBS, where the government several years ago bough I believe over 80% of RBS’s shares, at an average in price of five squid (500p).

The current price of RBS shares is under 400p, if you look to your “trees” and use the branches to deduct under 400p from 500p, you will begin to see the wood through those trees, HOW CLOSE WE ARE TO GETTING OUR MONEY BACK.

FYI the short to long term collateralised lending by the Bank of England to the UK banking system, to add urgent liquidity it could no longer obtain from the inter-bank money & capital markets e.g. bank bond issuance, brought in a £££millions in profit to the government, via the BoE, who made a very small turn on very large sums on collateralized money lending to the banks e.g. banks deposited assets (like mortgages) with the BOE, and getting cash back.

So as Mr Brand would say...'got it mate'?

mystificatory nonsense - and as for all those jobs this 'industry' produced - the world is not one bit better off for it - but rather it perpetuates all the problems. Now if those financial services workers were teachers, nurses, ice cream inventors, artists, street cleaners, guitar makers, bicycle mechanics....then their jobs might be worth something.

But - in more important news - New Era residents have won a victory - and RB played a part in that.

Russell Brand is a magniloquent champagne socialist.

The letter would have been very good if he/she who wrote it hadn't concluded about two thirds in.

ichyleg....how do you think the Emerging Economies financed themselves if not through the capital markets?

How do you think large companies expand/hire if not through those same markets?

And how do you think governments issue bonds/debt to finance overspending economies and have excellent buy/sell liquidity for investors e.g. pension funds, if not through those very same markets?

if a government looking to sell it back one day BUYS stock at 500p and needs to sell it at OVER 500p, how is that "mystificatory nonesense" - it's simples really.

HOW CLOSE WE ARE TO GETTING OUR MONEY BACK

Can't wait. Will I get it as a cheque or a postal order? Or rather not at all - because it will just be slurped up by the megarich.

I don't think either of them emerged as heroic in any sense. I found the letter to be better written than what Brand would manage himself but the repeated references to paella became really irritating after the second mention. Paella is the type of food that improves with reheating in the office microwave and some people may prefer it cold. I doubt it was particularly warm anyway after the trek back to the office in the cold. The nothing-comes-between-me -and-my-food attitude is rather juvenile. The video of the incident on YouTube would suggest that he said something to RB first which is why RB even noticed him in the first place. Also interesting that he chose to address it on his own previously (largely) inactive blog thus ensuring increased traffic for a long time to come. Did he really need quite so many words to make his point?

BTW Isitmebut, are you paid for all your cut and paste efforts by the Tory Party or do you do it for free. It is just all your posts spout the same tory rubbish. I have heard there are professional 'lobbyists' who post crap like yours all day - heck are you even a mum, or do you just think there is some hegemonic work to be done here?

The banker's letter is terrible. He says 'Russell' about 100 times. He's clearly been on one of those courses where they tell you to constantly use a person's name.

You've addressed the letter to him. He knows it's to him, you don't need to then address every sentence to him as well.

He concedes to liking RB prior to their encounter and his style of writing suggests he still does despite asserting the contrary. Secret crush perhaps?

Telsa, telse, telsa …… so because someone bothers to know the facts, and puts those facts forward, often with qualified links to cut through ignorant ideological claptrap passed around like folklaw, I’m “paid” or a “lobbyist” – why don’t you spend more time challenging others facts (with facts of your own), rather than making pathetic excuses for your own lack of knowledge?

The FACT is, as the UK government on our behalf owns RBS shares at 500p, although we have a ‘book loss’ based on the current market price, that only becomes a real taxpayer loss IF we sell them BELOW 500p, but if we sell ABOVE 500p it is a profit – and why is that “tory rubbish” when I am sticking up for the Labour government who bought them ????

It was Brown and his advisor Ed Balls who in 1997 decided to take away sole banking supervision from the Bank of England, and formed a Regulatory tripartite; the UK Treasury (under government control), the newly formed and overburdened Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Bank of England, and this, with instructions to the FSA lighten regulation (as the Guardian link further above explains) meant a huge UK credit/debt bubble.

Look up the FACTS yourself, but you don’t have to take my word for it, Mr Brown acknowledged his mistakes, not understanding how the global banking system worked – where the global risk exposure of one bank to another, meant the risk of banking contagion was always there.
metro.co.uk/2011/04/11/gordon-brown-i-made-big-mistake-on-banks-before-financial-crisis-650630/

And just to enrich your life (and Mr Brand’s) further with FACTS, the capital markets that could have a main European Centre anywhere within the EU, and pay their taxes there, are getting back to the tax receipt levels Mr Brown's increased spending counted on, with far less risk/exposure to a global ‘event’, than in the decade to 2007, when people qualified for bank lending, by just having a pulse.

“U.K. Financial Firms Paid the Most Tax Since 2007, Report Says”

“The U.K. financial-services industry contributed 65.6 billion pounds ($103 billion) in taxes in the last fiscal year, the highest since 2007, according to a report.”

“Financial-services firms, which employ more than 1.1 million people in the U.K., represent 11.5 percent of total government tax receipts, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP report prepared for the City of LondonCorp. published today. The taxes collected are for the 12 months through April and are up 0.9 percent from the year-earlier period, the City of London said.”

He's not a banker in actual fact, but a business analyst - and for one of RBS's various subsidiary type companies, doesn't work for RBS itself. I find the whole "banker" thing a bit silly - you could be a business analyst (most likely on a comparatively modest salary) in virtually any company in any industry.

What people mean of course when they have a go at the bankers are the traders - the silly money brigade who were/are encouraged and rewarded for making money at any cost. He isn't one of them.

I'm no major fan of rb but he does state clearly it was the big bosses he had already been declined an appt with before deciding to show up.

I'm still not sure that this argument of " if we don't pay big money and bonuses they will all buggar off" washes anymore.

I don't think I want the kind of people who put their own renumeration before the good of everyone else, in the most powerful positions. There is just something wrong in the psyche that says "we are indisposable, you will pay what we want or we will leave".

There are millions of people who take vocational careers, where the money is crap but who without this country would fall apart. I am sure I will be told this is a simplistic comparison but I don't understand why banking has to be so very different.

I think the stat of £80 billion or so paid in bonuses being just about equal to the amount cut in disability benefits is very poignant.

Oh and Telsa, I'm not sure any lobbyist would admit to being so on a discussion forum. Sorry Isitmebut, but calling anyone "pathetic" for not putting the hours and days in you clearly do I think is quite insulting to those who work all hours on low income, and to those who might have high caring responsibilities for example, so I thought that was a bit strong.

I was a little person so am not using it in a derogatory sense but to make a point that these banks are not staffed entirely by fat cat bankers but by us normal people.

And if the government capped bonuses the bankers would just get huge pay increases which would mean what were discretionary bonuses now become guaranteed monthly income and they also win in terms of their pensions too.

I agree with your first point Madamecastafiore - I think there has been some awful tales of ordinary high street bank clerks being subject to abuse from those who are rightly angry at the "bankers"; when it is the traders and management up high across the finacial sector who have been subject to no-quibble bonuses when their performance was so awful, that has rightfully (although sometimes mis-placed) sparked such outrage.

But I think RB is getting a ribbing for not making this distinction, probably because of the response from a worker who was affected by the "security shut down". My point was that RB was out to engage with the big bosses at RBS who had refused him an appointment, so he did what many broadcasters have done in this type of situation - turn up with a film crew to expose their refusal to engage.

Re: capping bonuses. I wonder if we just need to rethink the entire way "professionals" in this industry are selected and trained, perhaps. Inject some social responsibility, ethics and morality somewhere along the way, rather than seemingly focus entirely on producing profit-driven monsters, who seemingly stop at nothing because the system "allows" it, until the government comes down hard/closes loopholes etc.

I should add re: my earlier post to Isitmebut, that I was referring to the comment "pathetic excuses" rather than calling any single person pathetic. I still think it was a bit strong though.

If I were one of the RBS management I'd If ask that RB get himself an economics degree or at least some understanding of the economy as a whole before I bothered taking time out of my busy schedule to speak to the wanker.

It's funny how RB wasn't so vocal about those nasty capitalists when he was shagging Jemima!

Well that's as maybe, like I said I am not a major rb fan, but whether rbs likes it or not, he is gaining public support and sometimes it's better to engage, than ignore. We don't know what reasons have been given as to why they declined an appt.

I'm not sure why I'm defending rb but the relationship (I had to look it up mind ) seems to only have been for a year, ending in sept. I am sure he's been banging on for longer than that?

I would suggest RBS declined Brands cheap publicity stunt of a meeting, for a film funded by tax breaks from the likes of bankers bonuses, as the man only talks, he does not listen – so why give the fool any time of day when he hasn’t bothered to fully understand what caused the financial crisis - and RBS’s banking decision mistakes made earlier on, thinking (as our government did) at the time, it would be over soon?

The financial crash was not “putting themselves ahead of others” or about large bonuses, they have been paid to those in Investment Banking here since the mid 1970’s, when Switzerland changed their tax law and they began locating European head offices in London.

In a nutshell crash was about investment and commercial banks being allowed to grow too large, by governments and their regulators, in America by unwinding financial safeguards put in place in America in 1933 (the last time a financial crash became a Great recession/Dep;ression) with the last bit repealed in 1999 - resulting in those banks lending too much to to SME’s to buy commercial property, and individuals to buy anything they wanted through the High Street banks, actively ENCOURAGED by governments here and in America.

”What Was The Glass-Steagall Act?”
www.investopedia.com/articles/03/071603.asp

”In 1933, in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and during a nationwide commercial bank failure and the Great Depression, two members of Congress put their names on what is known today as the Glass-Steagall Act (GSA). This act separated investment and commercial banking activities. At the time, "improper banking activity," or what was considered overzealous commercial bank involvement in stock market investment, was deemed the main culprit of the financial crash.”

In the mid to late 1990’s Gordon Brown had meetings with ex U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan, and adopted their ‘less banking regulation’ stance, and Brown even lectured other European leaders on the need for less financial regulation, while imposing massive regulation on other business sectors.
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1541302/Business-pays-16315bn-red-tape-bill.html

“THE TIDE of red tape introduced by Labour has cost business more than £15bn. Firms have spent more than £3bn a year implementing the thousands of regulations brought in since Tony Blair won power in 1997, the British Chambers of Commerce said on Monday.”

Yes by 2007/8 Investment Banks were often involved in Proprietary Trading, where they had a team trading for the banks own profits, but that was a small percentage of the overall business of Investment Banking.

The UK’s Northern Rock who was nationalised first, with no compensation to shareholders, was not an Investment Bank, it should have been given liquidity like all the other banks months later, but the Labour/Brown government had not given powers to any in their NEW regulatory tripartite to take Northern Rock under their wing to protect it PRIOR to the large liquidity injection, as thought the financial crisis would end quite quickly.

RBS’s key mistake, IMO, was the director’s decision to take over the large Dutch ABN/Amro Bank at a falling equity price early in the crisis, also thinking that the financial crash would end within months. If it had, the directors in an investment banking industry where market share is important would have been shareholder heroes, but it didn’t, so should have fell on their own swords, or be forced out.

Meanwhile, employees in the RBS investment bank, nearly off-setting all the losses of the RBS commercial bank (lending to you and I), have been told since 2008 that they should not be paid as much as their peers in other banks due to errors of a management long gone.

So the best RBS people who through their careers had year on year managed the inherent risk of investment banking the best (and were compensated accordingly), leave, so the UK taxpayer/shareholder might save £1 million in a employee bonus, but don’t have the £10 to £20 million a year profit that person generated doing their job.

Think of any UK nationalised company in the past; how many steel, rail, coal miner would accept FOR YEARS a big reduction in their take home pay relative to their peers, just because their managers screwed up.

In conclusion; the financial crash was not caused by RBS, those there are doing their best to turn it around DESPITE having UK governments (pursuing populist policies) tie one hand behind their backs, that other foreign banks government did not, as their equity prices soared WAY ABOVE the 2007/8 prices – and you don’t need some ignorant, angry ‘prairie hat’ in the banks door displaying that ignorance. IMO.

Temp05978 …. First of all, in quoting my “pathetic” quote out of context, please read telsa’s comments to my posts over the last few pages; I have no problem when receiving uninformed comments to my posts, but ignorance AND abuse, I answer back.

Re your ”Re: capping bonuses. I wonder if we just need to rethink the entire way "professionals" in this industry are selected and trained, perhaps. Inject some social responsibility, ethics and morality somewhere along the way, rather than seemingly focus entirely on producing profit-driven monsters, who seemingly stop at nothing because the system "allows" it, until the government comes down hard/closes loopholes etc.”

I suspect that you have very little knowledge of the Global Investment Banking industry, how responsible for global growth/jobs over the past 30-40 years.

Firstly it is not our industry ‘to control’, out of the top 20 global Investment Banks, we may have two closer to the 20th in terms of business, rather than 10th - and no one within an institutional service industry filled with very bright people who all take take regulatory exams, are asked, or trained, to be socially irresponsible. More criminal charges for those doing wrong (as well as the approx £2.5 bil of bank fines going to good causes) is the answer and being administered.

But this would not have stopped the Financial Crash which was a systemic 'too balance sheet large' problem', rather than numerous criminal acts.

Secondly, by underwriting new government and company bond and equity issues, maintaining very tight prices/liquidity to global investors including our pension funds, those investment banks facilitate the world’s commerce, and although their job is assessing/taking on ‘risk’, it is done in a controlled way – and just as some footballers are so good at what they do, they are paid £200k A WEEK (whether they play or not) those individuals that are better than others at providing clients a service and making money out of controlling that risk, are paid big bonuses.

Thirdly, the bonuses paid are by THE SHAREHOLDERS of those investment banks, it is the TAX PAID by the owners of those banks in America, Germany, France, Japan, Italy etc TO THE UK EXCHEQUER, via their UK based companies/employees, that pays for the “disability benefits” you mention.

Re your “I think the stat of £80 billion or so paid in bonuses being just about equal to the amount cut in disability benefits is very poignant” - why on earth would you think those global investment banks would be paying any monies direct to our social services, if not to their investment bank employees who have done a great job for them???

Finally, I though bonuses have been capped in cash terms at a very low level by the current government, do they not get paid in ‘stuff’ like equity in their company they cannot touch for years, and can be clawed back if they were found guilty of wrongdoing?

Stupidly those rules changed an industry where employees had relatively low salaries, but were paid in bonuses at year end (only) if they did well, to banks ‘fixed costs’ increasing needing much larger salaries and less bonuses to attract good staff, but where those who under perform over the year still get paid well for what could be an average performance in managing the banks risk.

But it is clearly working for the UK exchequer and the taxpayer, as if the 2014 £60 odd billion a year direct taxes (plus tens of £billions more in support businesses i.e. law firms, stationary, bars, eateries etc) were not paid in the UK, that would be £60 plus billion more cuts to services, or significantly higher taxes for all.

due to errors of a management long gone

So what was done to hold those responsible for such errors to account?

Temp05978 ….. first of all, I’d thought I’d made fairly clear over 2-3 pages that “those responsible” are numerous, including governments and their financial regulators.

Re individual banking directors, Sir Fred Godwin of RBS, knighted in 2004 for his 'services to banking' (lending to anything with a pulse), who later decided to buy the large Dutch bank at (with the benefit of hindsight) at the wrong time - well he became just a ‘Fred’ in 2012 when stripped of his Sir-ship.

I can’t be ar$ed to look up every other CEO/director who lost their jobs, pensions etc and will never work in the industry again.

But again, lets be clear here, these were mainly COMMERCIAL decisions, at the end of a decade of a massive growth in banks and their lending, with a strong economy and relatively UK low inflation/interest rates due to global influencies = for banks, a VERY low risk environment.

If ‘buying a bank’ at the wrong time (again with hindsight) is a crime, then who should be ‘put up against the wall’ for screwing Lloyds shareholders, the CEO of Lloyds Bank, taking over the financially troubled Halifax Bank of Scotland, or Mr Brown encouraging that shotgun marriage?

Look at it this way, Prime Ministers and governments are immune from prosecution for making badly thought out numb-nut decisions ON PURPOSE, whilst in government.

In companies, while of course CEO’s, Directors and employees should be prosecuted if instigate or are involved in criminal acts, but HOW can anyone be criminally prosecuted for making commercial decisions – badly influenced by an unforeseen global financial ‘event’, morphing into a deep/long economic recession, not seen since the 1930’s???