Returning from an recent trip to Dubai I was reading some of the international press in the airport lounge as you do. The Times newspaper (dated 8th November, 2012 at page 29) reported that one Merceds Rojo-Izquerido a former director of Bankia, one of the Spanish banking giants whose implosion forced a one hundred billion euro bailout, told the National Criminal Court in Madrid that she “didn’t understand anything”. Mercedes was a political nominee of the current governing Popular Party and holds a degree in chemistry not in finance or banking as you might have expected. For turning up at board meetings where she “understood nothing”, Mercedes was paid 374,000 Euros per annum! Over 30 other former directors have also been summoned before the court to explain their contribution to this economic and social disaster. These include Rodrigo Rato a former IMF managing director. Is it not strange that we have all understood that a great contributor of the global financial crisis was that governments’ naively assumed that bank boards would do the right thing by their shareholders and customers? In Spain we have the politicians appointing their political friends and allies to the bank boards that have contributed to Spain’s current economic collapse. Spain has had over 400,000 home repossession’s and the media and public are becoming increasingly concerned at a recent spate of suicides by distraught folk who have had their homes re-possessed. In Spain once your home is re-possessed and sold the former homeowner is still responsible for any outstanding balance on their loan. The politicians fain at concern but it is they who should also be before the courts because of their wanton disregard of the responsibility of holding public office.