Over the past 10 weeks, both Barclays and HSBC have gone through a thoroughly identifiable 'near death experience'.

I referred to the Barclays recently when I pointed out that the fabled financial engineering skills of chairman Marcus Aguis - who seems determined to be the greatest Rothschild of his generation - would probably see Barclays out of its difficulties. Barclays' difficulties were of a nature which could only have been cured by a continuation of the audacious banking policy which Aguis has been carrying out over these last 18 months.

This included his Lehman Brothers bank acquisition at the height of the September financial blizzard. At long last, a banker with a Rothschild connection (but by no means directly belonging to a Rothschild bank) had established a presence on Wall Street, in the 35-storey Lehman building.

This has been the greatest, and by far the most promising, banking development of this present crisis which has been caused more by aggressive banker ego than anything else.

Last Thursday, Bloomberg illustrated how former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson bullied banks to accept a significant infusion of government aid. In the afternoon, Bloomberg became more aggressive and repeated the statement: "Paulson told bankers to take US taxpayers' aid or be 'exposed' memo shows." Bloomberg's words smelt of overwhelming innuendo, to say the least.

The incestuous relationship between US bankers and the Federal Reserve must stop. Rothschilds have always been famous for their sense of public duty. Agius's Wall Street banking strategy nearly caused a shareholder revolt in Barclays. There was a serious attempt to defenestrate him. He finally emerged triumphant, carried along remorselessly on the crest of a rebounding share price.

Goldman has offered to immediately pay back the US government aid it received a few months ago. Washington has been advised by a prominently displayed Financial Times article not to accept the money, as it would lose its power on the Wall Street bank which seems determined not only to dominate America, as it plainly already does, but the entire world. Goldman, like Barclays, wants to be free of government control. It wants to pay its bankers what they deserve.

HSBC's 'near death experience' last March was marked in Malta by the publication of its local results on April 1, which were extraordinarily successful, reporting a return on equity of 22.4 per cent.

This was 20 per cent higher than the banking group's world average. HSBC's networks in Malta and Hong Kong cushioned the tremendous losses of its utterly disastrous US operation which clocked losses in terms of tens of billions.

On Friday, HSBC and Barclays were on the up again. Many already view them as the leaders which will pull the world out of recession.

Mr Azzopardi Vella, economic consultant with DBR Investments Ltd, has promoted the Malta Development Fund and advised S and P.

johnazzopardivella@hotmail.com

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.