A whiff of hypocrisy?

Today those paragons of virtue, distrusted by all and sundry, will let into some of the obscenely greedy bankers. The treasury Committee is to examine a few bankers and former bankers as to their behaviour during the years leading up to the credit crunch.

Few would defend the bankers, they made huge profits and paid themselves large bonuses. Several of them have already paid for the latter in part by being sacked.

That they made misjudgments is not open to question - the RBS decision to get its hands on the Dutch bank by paying more than other banks was crass, and seemed so at the time.

The criticism that they lent on the basis of "dodgy" securities should not be directed at them alone. The best financial brains had dressed up doubtful paper assets in such a way that few could disentangle them, and defeated regulators and treasuries as well as bankers. To some extent they were reduced to this by the determination here and in the USA that those not able to repay should nonetheless be allowed to purchase houses. In addition interest rates were driven relentlessly down, binge borrowing encouraged and saving discouraged, with the result that banks lacked the normal level of deposits from which to lend.

G. Brown has changed his plea that he is not guilty because it is a world rec/depression. He is now talking of the nasty world bankers whenever he can. What sort of reception will the bankers get today, bearing in mind that the judge and jury have a majority of Labour MPs who are concerned about losing power in the next 18 months?

The saddest thing is that this group of MPs is a selection from the House of Commons, most of whom want to keep hidden how well they are doing at the taxpayer's expense. The Committee members may be honourable exceptions to the "graft" which pervades Westminster, but their occupation is one increasingly held in contempt. That they should sit in judgement on bankers who may have acted imprudently in taking advantage of a situation created by politicians, but who are no more guilty, smells of hypocrisy.

Should we have a reverse case, with bankers sitting in judgement on MPs?