David Buik (below)…Kermit the Apologist

In saying people ‘want their money back’, Barack Obama has finally connected with populist common sense.

Many of the quality press and business titles have been rude this morning on the subject of President Obama’s plans to recoup the American taxpayers’ bailout money. The Telegraph calls the ‘money back’ phrase disingenuous, but I think misses the point: on both the Left and Right of US politics, the excuses still being trotted out by the inexcusably greedy are way beyond disingenuous: they simply do not wash. Americans know when somebody stole from them; the banking community over there is even more isolated than here.
In this sense, Obama has risen above some of the more conservative advice he must be getting. Finally, he has used the moral compass so beloved of political rhetoric yet so absent from most legisative behaviour.
The Brown regime (and the Tories for that matter) remain more isolated from real public opinion – and I’m not just talking about bar-room banter. If you missed it, get that Iplayer going and watch the BBCNews lunchtime round-table from lunchtime today. Around that table were American, French, British and Arab commentators – capitalists every one, and mad as Hell with the increasingly risible ‘reasons’ why old banking ways are back in again, even madder risks being taken, and even bigger bonuses being paid.
Nor was this merely bellowed rage. All sat calmly and said “They have it coming, and there’s more to come”. By this they meant both taxes and commercial disasters.
Contrast this with BCG’s house muppet David Buik, the man every German war-criminal should’ve employed at Nuremburg. He dismisses public anger and political remonstration with a dismissive sneer and his favourite word ‘posturing’. I know precisely how and with what I’d like to change Buik’s posture every time he appears on our screens.

The majority of even ‘expert’ commentary still buys the gradual-recovery-they-have-to-pay-them-well bananas masquerading as analysis. Capitalist finance as currently practised is dysfunctional, anti-social, and an outrageously perpetrated scam.
The decent Brits and most Americans have the bankers’ number off by heart.
They’re right to demand their money back. Obama is right. And the Elite here is, as usual, completely wrong.