Zombies can help bring economy back to life

IN RESPONSE to Bill Jamieson’s question in Scotland on Sunday “Will zombies be the death of us?” (Business, 25 ­November), I would say they have the potential to be our saviours.

My wife and I have been “zombified” for the past five years by the actions of the Clydesdale Bank and the two bailed out banking groups, Lloyds and RBS. It is a most unpleasant and stressful experience which I am sure the directors of all the zombie companies are well aware, yet are powerless to change because UK Financial Investments Ltd who control the taxpayers shareholdings in the bailed out banking groups are not acting in our best interests due to Treasury pressures and conflicts of interest.

The UKFI have not and are not using our collective wallets to the taxpayers 
advantage in relation to the ­domestic economy and the government’s austerity measures cannot work until UKFI is allowed to do so.

Meanwhile, back at the banks, Appalling Management Syndrome which necessitated the bailout in the first place, mutated into the psyche of the banking elite in the middle of the last decade resulting in the current Mad Banker Disease epidemic. The government while looking for a regulatory behavioural vaccine for the bankers has totally ignored the financial blood transfusion the zombie companies so desperately ­require.

Mr Jamieson in his article mentions that the banks stand accused of holding back recovery by “forbearance” when in fact it is the UKFI who are holding back the recovery by their forbearance with the banks and our money. Why are the banks being allowed to pay out billions of pounds in compensation, presumably through quantative easing for PPI and swaps miss-selling ­together with LIBOR fixing fines when the domestic economy is in reality going into depression?

The zombie companies who are our only saviours are in forced hibernation, awaiting the wake-up call from a new breed of visionary bankers in whom we can trust and who are prepared to operate within the existing professional code of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland, whereby the domestic economy will make a rapid and sustainable recovery over the next three to five years.

Gordon C Neave, via email