How to handle Russian oligarchs

On today's BBC website there is a strange story of how Putin bullied and humiliated billionaire businessman Oleg Deripaska last week. On live TV, he stood over the embarrassed oligarch and forced him to sign on the dotted line to reopen an aluminium plant he had just closed. It was almost old Joe Stalin in action which is fitting as Putin does seem to show Stalinist tendencies.

Maybe another leader who has show Stalinist tendencies, not least in internal Labour Party affairs, Gordon Brown, could use the same tactics with the LDV closure in the UK. If he's not sure where Oleg is at the moment, he can ask Oleg's friend Peter Mandelson.

Oleg Deripaska is well known to the UK because George Osbourne leaked the story that Mandelson was having a free holiday on Oleg's yacht off Corfu. This caused suspicions because actions taken by Mandelson when he was an EU commissioner over the tax on imported aluminium increased Deripaska's already great wealth. (There is no proof that Mandelson or those close to him gained financially from these actions except for this luxury holiday in Corfu. Peter Mandelson lives in a £2.5 million villa in London.)

George Osbourne didn't get away unblemished by the affair as he knew Mandelson was there because he also visited Oleg on the yacht. The yacht was moored off of Osbourne friend Nat Rothschild's villa and it was Rothschild, a rich hedge fund manager, who introduced them. Rothschild considered that Osbourne had broken a confidence so then made public that Osbourne had been there to ask Oleg for a donation to the Tory Party via his ownership of LDV.

What a complicated corrupt little world these people live in.

So where has all the money gone!

What Brown, Darling, Cameron and Osborne have in common in this financial crisis is it was correct to save the banks and because of the cost of doing this with taxpayers money things like health and education will be cut. The differences will be in how big the cuts are. The Tories are reverting to old style Thatcherism so forget all about the hug-a-hoody PR.

I read on the BBC website that Mandelson said soundbites are not dead. How about this one then? Following on from Tom Cruise's "Show me the money" in Jerry Maguire, "Follow the money".

Now I'm sure there are good reasons for keeping the banks solvent, bailing them out so they can repay the people they owe money to may be a good thing. Maybe the future earnings and tax income of the City investment banks justifies paying off the present investors in them and keeping London's reputation untarnished among the rich and powerful. If this is the case shouldn't Darling show us the maths?

Now don't confuse saving the banks with small depositors savings or even bank workers jobs. Deposit insurance protects the former and nationalization after bankruptcy would take care of the latter. All I am saying is there was an alternative, bank failure, to throwing billions at the banks. It might not have been the best option but it would be nice to know why not.

So where did the money go? Who had invested in all these failing funds and bad investment instruments at the banks? I wonder whose names would come up. For sure from the UK would be the pension funds. So we have indirectly bailed out some pension funds but that doesn't stop Mandelson talking about the problem of funding the Post Office workers pensions needing outside money. Who else? Must be some UK based hedge funds I guess but then I would be looking overseas. How about the Russian oligarchs, the oil rich Arab sheikdoms and the money that the Chinese have been putting out on the world markets instead of raising the standard of living of their own people. On top of that we would find the rich and famous both from the UK and overseas. Probably find we bailed out the Blairs and the Camerons.

Wouldn't it be nice to know?