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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

If you hold a position of trust (elected politician, policeman, bureaucrat, CEO, board member, employee representative, union boss), and you use the powers of that position to further some private interest rather than the interests of those you are set to serve, then you're corrupt. That's more or less Transparency International's definition, and I agree with it.

But banks' trustees aren't the public. It's their depositors, shareholders and customers. And by most accounts, they serve those reasonably well.

So yeah, they could maybe make a case that Britain is the most corrupting country in the world. But that is not the same thing. Compared to other nations, Britain's public trustees probably aren't so bad at serving the interests of the public.

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> Compared to other nations, Britain's public trustees probably aren't so bad at serving the interests of the public.

Dave & Co have probably been the worst offenders in recent recent years for selling public assets and companies they have nationalized to buddies of theirs at massively discounted prices, beginning with the RBS.

> nationalized to buddies of theirs at massively discounted prices, beginning with the RBS.

What? I guess you have much evidence.

Sold at a huge loss, certainly: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rbs-share-sa...

How does that indicate corruption?

"the share price had been at 400p as recently as February, leading critics to blast the decision to sell now and question the relationship between banks and the Treasury"

http://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/595769/RBS-privatisati...

The Royal Mail would be a much better example of that; but then that happened on Vince Cable's watch (a part of then David's coalition). Of course the banks involved were accused of providing bad advice according to a committee of MPs; in particular undervalued property owned by Royal Mail.

"some of the City’s biggest investment banks – including Goldman Sachs and UBS – are charging the government a £1 fee for work that would normally cost tens of millions of pounds."

"Oliver Holbourn, head of market investments at UKFI, said some City firms had even offered to pay the government to work on its privatisations."

"The banks, however, eventually concluded that such arrangements could be an offence under the US foreign corrupt practices act."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/08/mps-warn-uk...

I don't think Dave has yet surpassed Bliar and Brown. Especially once you include public private partnerships and the lifetime of debt landed on the schools and hopsitals as a result.

"they serve those reasonably well."

I think anyone who had RBS shares before the bailout might disagree with you on that point!

Also, I wonder who the single largest shareholder of UK banks might be?

You wouldn't even be arguing that. You'd be arguing that money corrupts people, and because there's lots of international money managed by the UK, the UK is therefore "corrupting".

So what? Money corrupts, this is not news. In any economy where you have regions of the world that specialise, there will be regions with lots of banks.

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