It's time to crackdown on bent bankers, felonious financiers and shady stockbrokers

When the international banking system collapsed in disarray causing a global recession a couple of years ago, the greedy and incompetent investment bankers who caused the meltdown prostrated themselves at the doors of government and grovelled for taxpayer's cash to bail them out of the terrible mess they had created for themselves – and, as it turned out, for everybody else. Unfortunately, politicians like President George W. Bush, who had many political donors and backers in the finance industry, caved into their pleas and lavished trillions of dollars of the public's hard-earned money on his investment banking buddies - who then picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and laughed all the way back to their banks. There were, however, conditions attached to the refinancing of the banking industry: those being that the banks should use the money to recapitalise themselves and to lend money to small- and medium-sized businesses but not, not under any circumstances whatsoever, to use it to pay themselves massive bonuses. So, after millions of people have been made redundant as a result of the economic crisis and face another winter wondering how they are going to feed their families and pay the heating bills, have the bankers kept their side of the bargain? Well, let's see: Capitalisation: DOWN http://www.cityam.com... Lending to business: DOWN http://www.globalresearch.ca... http://realbusiness.co.uk... Bonuses: UP http://www.guardian.co.uk... The banks have been given the chance to show self-restraint in bonus payments and thus avoid calls for tighter regulations but their greed is so insatiable and ingrained that they couldn't resist the temptation to lavish obscene amounts of cash on themselves. Meanwhile, the taxpayer remains highly vulnerable. If the banking industry collapses again they will have to write off the trillions they are owed by the banks and, because most of the public's money is held in bank accounts, spend further trillions on bailing them out again. Or it may be the case the governments will simply not have the money to bail them out again. If this is the case there will be chaos. People will not be able to withdraw money from banks or use their debit and credit cards and most people with mortgages would be made homeless as the banks' administrators called those loans – and even those few that had enough money in cash to pay off the remainder of their mortgage in one lump sum at short notice would struggle because their cash deposits in the banks will have been wiped out. We can't let this happen and, no matter how loudly the banking industry protests, now is time to crackdown on the finance industry and introduce regulations to ensure the endemic greed and incompetence of investment bankers cannot cause another economic collapse. That means not a penny in bonuses unless the banks meet the government's and the regulatory authorities' lending and capitalisation targets in full – and that should apply to all financial institutions and not just banks that took government loans, because the whole industry has benefited from quantitative easing and the other government interventions that increased liquidity in the markets. Thank you.