greedy idiotic investors

It is only a few days since it was being suggested that everything we hold dear financially - and what else is there? - was about to collapse; but already the moaning is starting. At the end of last week, the Today programme gave air time to a man who demanded "fair" treatment for "ordinary investors" who had lost out - as they see it - in the government subsidy to banks.

By and large these are people who voted for demutualisation of their building societies. Some of them actually joined the building society(ies) in order to benefit. That is, they joined without any prior participation solely to vote to change the nature of the society for their own benefit.

Was that fair?

They hoped to gain (a) free shares from the vote (b) profit from the anticipated rise in share price as the demutualised society behaved in a predatory manner.

The idiot of whom I speak claimed that they - the shareholders - were "creating wealth"...

Now this is a statement of belief, not reason.

You can't argue with such an idiotic statement; but it is a widely made statement. It deserves as much respect as any other statement of belief which attributes a priori rights to the believers. It deserves no respect.

It should be obvious to anyone more intelligent than a long deceased rat that profit is made by taking from others more than one has expended.

You paint my house or cook my food or whatever it is, while I do something else, then I recompense you. That's fine.

You buy something and then charge me over the odds for it. That's theft. That's wealth creation.

The building societies were set up as an alternative to the banks. They were a way of freeing ourselves from their exploitation. Those who destroyed almost all the building societies were capable of knowing what they were doing. They were seeking to grab other people's money and other people's way of housing themselves; they were probably justifying it to themselves by telling themselves and each other that those of us who voted against demutualisation were losers.

For me, one of the few enjoyable things about what has happened, whatever happens in the long run, is that these childish, grasping, destructive people have lost some or all of their investment, an investment they made just to benefit themselves unfairly. I might think otherwise if they showed remorse. Instead they behave like noisy children having a tantrum in the supermarket.

Let them eat angel delight.