On the 27th February 2014 the Royal Bank of Scotland announced losses of £8,200,000,000 for 2013. This brings total losses since 2008 to £46,000,000,000 which is more than the £45 billion that the bank received from the taxpayer when it was bailed out in 2008. Money well spent then!
The bank still has £38,000,000,000 of highly toxic loans on its books. There was talk of moving this debt out of the bank and into a so called ‘Bad Bank’ to be looked after by the state. Hold on a minute! RBS is already 82% owed by the taxpayer, what difference does it make?
The scary fact is that RBS has a £1,900,000,000,000 balance sheet that it is trying to unwind. This figure is nearly one and a half times the size of the whole UK economy! It has just recently been announced that RBS directors are sharing a £18,250,000 share deal! RBS is trying to compete in this insane financial world where banks are being kept alive by money printing, but RBS is broken and rotten to the core, it will probably take the whole country down with it.
Meanwhile Fred Goodwin at just the age of 55 is enjoying his £342,500 per annum pension that he has been claiming since 2009. Not a bad reward for steering one of the world’s largest banks into bankruptcy. He is currently working as a charted accountant; I really don’t think that this is a good idea and I fear for the company he is working for.
In my opinion, ‘Fred the Shred’ should have been fed through the shredder! Seriously, why isn’t this guy and his cohorts in prison? Actually, no that would be a further waste of tax payer’s money! I think working in a homeless shelter for a few years on the minimum wage would give Fred the reality check he needs.
