Banks get £46bn hand-out

Trillion-pound bail-out not enough?

Sept 8, 2011 – This story didn’t make the front pages. The big banks continue to get massive hand-outs. According to a New Economics Foundation report, the ‘Big Five’ UK banks received £46bn in subsidies in 2010 – equivalent to getting £1,840 from every household in Britain.

This is an ongoing ‘too-big-to-fail’ subsidy, which the banks get on top of the trillion-pound bail-out. The Robin Hood Tax campaign, which helped fund the report, said taxpayer subsidies are sustaining ‘casino-banking’.

“Too big to fail”? “Casino-banking”? In the moral accounting metaphor of many conservatives, banks (and other big businesses) are apparently still seen as deserving – you don’t often see headlines about corporate welfare “SCROUNGERS”. Why deserving? Pre-conceptualised according to the long-entrenched iconography/framing of the heroic, hard-working, self-reliant, successful “wealth creator” (includes newspaper proprietors). Er… self-reliant?