Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-04-16-Speech-2-020-000"
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"en.20130416.4.2-020-000"2
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"Mr President, what we are dealing with here is a triumph of hope over experience. We are talking about things which are not the problem; the problem which we have is a flawed banking system – a fractional reserve banking system where bankers can lend money that they do not have. If you go back in time to the United States in the 1850s, that was a capital offence. You could hang for it.
We have this extraordinary situation where we have had regulation – lots of regulation – which has been the wrong sort of regulation, has it not? And so we have had another disaster. None of this is actually going to save us from another disaster further down the line. It is bound to happen, because we have not addressed the real problems, and that is the EU’s fractional reserve banking system. We must have a commodity bank on the one hand and an investment bank on the other.
So, Commissioner, you talk about the banks’ ability to withstand shocks. Well, by that definition – by your definition – a shock is people turning up wanting their money back. That is not a shock; that should be a day-to-day occurrence and should be dealt with accordingly. We are talking about bankers’ bonuses, which is an absolutely wonderful way of taking everybody’s eye off the ball.
What we have actually had here is criminal activity by banks – and not a single banker has been sent to prison. That is extraordinary: billions of pounds have been taken away from taxpayers, taken away from depositors and bondholders, and yet not a single banker is in jail. That is a disgrace! We really have to use the law of the land, not so much regulation and printing money – and central banks are equally culpable, make no mistake.
I would like to see some central bankers in prison. I call ‘quantitative easing’ counterfeiting. Printing money is counterfeiting. It is illegal; if a private citizen did it, they would go to jail. So let us look into our own hearts. All the very unpleasant arrangements that politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers have between them at the expense of the taxpayer, let us end them and let us end them now."@en1
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