I’m sure that most of us watching the continuing cycle of banking scandals do so with a combined sense of bemusement and disgust. The collapse of The Northern Rock Bank during the sub-prime lending crisis of 2007, heralded the start of that cycle and, with it, the beginning of the worst recession in living memory.

It is a recession caused by the greed of financial institutions eager to make fortunes by lending money and  granting mortgages, usually at exorbitant rates, to people totally ill-equipped to repay them. The results of their greed were that borrowers, unable to repay their loans, had their homes repossessed and the ultimate lenders were left out of pocket, causing a spiral of debt.

When the continuing crisis caused the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland the bank was rescued and bailed out by Government (and therefore taxpayers’) money. In spite of this, leading City bankers have continued to award themselves huge personal bonuses when, all around them, people and businesses not so fortunate, and not so immoral, have gone to the wall. Now we learn that Barclays and other banks have defrauded us further by manipulating and fixing the inter-bank interest rate (the Libor rate) for their own benefit.

To refer to their actions as immoral is actually euphemistic. The correct word is criminal and if the behaviour of bankers, traders and other “masters of the universe” as they arrogantly refer to themselves is shown to fall foul of the law (and the fact that the FBI are investigating Barclays traders in the USA seems to indicate that this is indeed the case) those responsible should be investigated and prosecuted without delay. It is our money that has been misappropriated and, like common thieves, the perpetrators should be held to account by the courts.