"archetypal leftie-wankerdom"

I must admit I do like that - well done MGM-Lion you have them described accurately to a 'T'.

Apologies for the typo Kenny B I promise to try harder in future, I did of course mean "sniping". All of that though does not excuse your deplorable lack of knowledge considering that you voluntarily saw fit to engage in a discussion making assertions that are clearly wrong to anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge.

Jim Carroll of course does not have even rudimentary knowledge but once again he responds to what he thinks has been said as opposed to responding to what actually has been said - missing the mark by a "Kerry Mile" as usual. Pssst Jim we are talking about EU COMMISSIONERS NOT MEPs.

As to "crooked" bankers? Nobody complained when bankers were making spectacular profits which unlike Starbucks, Vodaphone, Google, et al, did pay their corporate taxes. The likes of Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown praised them and piled honours on them. Then along came a US President called Bill Clinton who in 1998 to demonstrate to all that the American Dream was still alive and kicking persuaded the main US Mortgage Brokers Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae to provide mortgages to people who should never have been lent a red cent. The lie not so much told but inferred as those Mortgage Brokers arranged mortgages with various banks and lending institutions was that the Federal Reserve would guarantee those loans, which of course they wouldn't. Now lots of people, bankers included actually believed this inferred and completely baseless guarantee. So when the S**T hit the fan in 2008 the Fed truthfully stated that they knew nothing about any guarantee, unfortunately when in November 2008 GWB asked Congress to approve $740 million to cover this, they said NO. Had they said YES there would have been no crash, there would have been no loss in confidence in the lending institutions. The reason the Democrat dominated Congress said No was because they wanted their man Barack Obama to ride to the rescue, which he did in February 2009, unfortunately by then it wasn't $740 million it was $834 million but by then it was too little and far too damn late. Why the banks had to be saved? Simple really, had they been allowed to fail, millions of people would have lost their savings, hundreds of thousands of businesses would have been forced to close their doors, with the subsequent loss of jobs, those who did not lose their jobs would not have been able to be paid, it would have been complete and utter chaos - so the Government did what it HAD TO DO and in so doing saved the situation.