Future Injunctive

Fred, Fred, Fred. Not content in ruining his bank he was set to ruin his life. But he got his cake - we paid for it and he ate it. If only we had known for sure he was as morally bankrupt as RBS was fiscally. We all suspected it.

The chin of the man was that as his company disintegrated around him, and we now know he was shopping around too, he had the utter disdain for everybody else that he sought to bargain for a super package on leaving the bank. As if he had done nothing wrong at all.

It's a different code. Whether it's money or power, there is something about the heady whiff of multiple noughts on currency bills that makes people do strange things. Morals go by the wayside, the common person in the street is made to feel we owe them and should cow tail to them while the build up of testosterone seems to make men believe that not only they can have who they like when they like but that they have to have some kind of outlet for their pent up manhood.

We have echoes of Strauss-Kahn as he slithers out on bail - it took him a long time to quit his post as Head of the IMF. Did he not think that his colleagues, world leaders and the public at large would think that his private dalliances and alleged criminal offences would not change his life forever? Did he not think that his wayward genitalia would master his downfall?

Is it denial that leads such people to ignore their shortcomings and make them believe that no one should judge them? Berlusconi, Max Mosley - I don't have to say anything more.

But you don't have to be a public name to be immune to this kind of thinking. Take a look at Munich Re - supposedly one of the most sombre insurance houses in the world. In 2007 the company threw a party in honour of a particularly successful salesman where around 100 guests not only enjoyed the thermal waters of a Hungarian resort but they also partook in the pleasures of 20 female prostitutes. In case you think this was some ad hoc affair caused by too many bottles of Krug champagne, the prostitutes wore coloured armbands to designate their availability and had stamps on their lower arm to tot up how many acts they had performed. German efficiency at its best - this might be a handy measure rather like a free bar with a limit. Let us not even consider the PC side of things as this story implies that the 100 guests were all men (please forgive me if I have omitted any ladies from that party).

The point here is that big money breeds a different code of behaviour. When we worry about bonuses, salaries the facts are that the super rich not only evade our taxes they also sidestep morals. And they think we do not have the right to judge them.

We do. They are in charge of our money and our future.

The code of Super Injunctions was put together only for these who could afford it. It is for those who live their lives so promiscuously that they do not want their shortcomings to affect their careers and they do not believe that we have the right to know. Not even their own families. How nice to be able to afford to wipe your moral slate clean.

It reminds me of Catholics buying their place in heaven. The world gets ever more sophisticated but the beast remains the same.


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