Barclays Billingsgate

Errol Louis, picking up on our own comments this week on the faux ire over the historic sins of Barclays Bank, attacks the hysteria and opines that there are many large corporations whose past sins deserve opprobrium but whose present behavior no where near resembles anything in its sordid past. As Louis says, "I readily concede, and have no doubt, that Barclays -like many companies with household names-profited from an untold number of monstrous crimes over the centuries."(my emphasis)

But Louis goes on the point out that this "blood money" theme, precisely because it is so common, is a thin reed to use in the attack on the Nets arena naming rights deal; "JPMorgan Chase, for instance, has multiple shameful connections to the slave trade and the Holocaust." (as does IBM as we have noted) This is surely indicative of the last gasp nature of the AY opposition.