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  GaryC - from the profits of course and it is the decisions of the executives that determine how well the company does. But then I know what you are going to say, that its the prices we pay, but then you have to take into account competition as a major factor in prices and those decision that maximise profits can also keep prices down with achieving volume and efficiency.
  
  Alexander.
  I am all in favour of encouraging employee share schemes and those employees who buy shares will have their say. Apart from that, no - its up to the shareholders.
  
  Once again you are talking total rubbish on a lot of fronts. You do not enact retrospective criminal legislation. Any changes to the law that would create a criminal offence for 'reckless' corporate behaviour would apply to future dealings. If it is found that any bank executive broke the laws that were in force in 2008 then they should certainly be 'done' for it.
  
  Remember - the bank behaviour, yes as I have agreed before some of that was bad in some banks, was encouraged by Gordon Brown (Mansion House speech) and enabled by his regulatory 'reforms'. So if it were to be retrospective would we see Brown up before the beak for aiding and abetting? Sadly we will not see that.
  
  Remember what I have told you before that I have a friend who was a bank chief exec before 1997. He told me that before the Brown reforms he had to go to the bank of England with his top management team and be quizzed over every aspect of his banking operations. The Bank of England had some quite draconian powers if they did not like what they heard. All that ended as a result of what Brown enacted and he encouraged the very behaviour the BoE blocked.
  
  RBS did make some bad calls but the worse were their buy-ups of small American banks that exposed them to the US toxic debt that arose from the Clinton reforms.
  
  You should remember as well that the economy started to slow down in 2007 before the banking crisis and the slowdown precipitated it, not the other way around. The problem was that Brown thought he had 'banned boom and bust' and ran the economy accordingly, hence the appalling fiscal position we were in at the start of the slowdown. I should add that the economy always works in cycles of growth contraction that are as certain as night and day - it is a measure of Brown's ego that he had thought he banned it.l
  
  Brown has a lot to answer for.

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