Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

There is one aspect I agree with despite the bovine idiocy of religion. The vicar.

A few pennies drop onto his collection plate. He lives in a small house and serves a small (and diminishing) church. Yet he is happy trimming the roses and praying for forgiveness over (amongst other things) Internet porn.

But despite appearances, the vicar and the banker both share something in common. An overwhelming belief in a fantasy which through the sheer number of believers has become reality.

As I saw the news of Barclays £5 billion profit in the depths of an economic crisis, I ran the palm of my hands over my skull in sheer frustration. But it should come as no surprise, because my skull - like the skull of all human kind, is dwarfed even by the size of my toilet seat. The problem is not the system, or the evils of capitalism, or the greed of any one person acting on his own. The problem is the combined achievement of all that’s bad about human nature.

The impulses and dreams which trigger our sense of reward are out of control like a faulty scientific experiment involving monkeys and peanuts.

The lure of money has been enough to send the banking industry insane, like a dribbling mental asylum freak crawling across the floor leaving a smearing trail of raw shit behind it. Everybody responsible for carrying out their day jobs in the financial sector have directly contributed to the perverse rise of the biggest downfall the world has ever seen. It’s time for a wake up call. The banks should all be split up at once, the world over. There should be no loop holes, no haven for ex-investment bankers. If they want to continue their career in banking they do so as a service to the world’s people. As a force for good. Every dime of profit is sent to those in need of a leg up. Governments, community organisers, African villages, infrastructure projects and people who live under 4ft high gaps in railway bridges with cardboard for wallpaper in India. These people have as much right on the money made by the hard work of the financial sector staff, as they do. Because their hard work is over-rewarded by a ratio of 100:1. The financial sector should be happy they have jobs at all, such has been the mass rip off of those who so unwittingly feed their salaries.

A smoky cloak and mirror obscured magic trick - this is what the financial sector has become. It doesn’t serve the people. It serve’s itself on a magic carpet of mathematical nonsense, which makes sense only to those who have engineered the world’s fantasy sector to accept this as the truth of the system. When it comes to the reality of the people, you see it on their credit card bills, on their bank statements, in the lure of the shopping centre, on their loans and in the bank’s marketing strategies.

It’s time to close the book on fantasy, and open a new one about reality.

The reality bible. No God, but happily no investment bankers either.