"The government approved it."

There are bank losses, and then there are bank losses. Today, the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the biggest banks in the world (and one of the printers of currency -- or really promissory notes tied to pounds sterling -- in Scotland), announced a loss for 2008 of £24.1 billion -- or about USD 34.8 billion. Even more strangely is the former chair of the bank Sir Fred Goodwin, who is widely blamed for the record loss, is refusing to give up his £693,000 annual pension for life, claiming "the government approved it."

I don't know about you, but if a bank bleeds that much money, then the first thing affected are pensions -- and I think in that situation executives should be the first to pay their benefits back. It is simply wrong to make the employees or customers of a financial institution pay for the mismanagement of the bigshots. Especially, when the London government has loaned RBS £25 billion and agreed to carry about £325 billion in its bad debts ...

I don't know how some of these bank executives sleep at night. Oh yeah, "on a big pile of money, with lots of beautiful women."

As for the "government approving it" -- well, such a government should get fired.

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