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Shredded: Inside RBS, the Bank That Broke Britain Hardcover – 5 Jun. 2014
- Print length480 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBirlinn Ltd
- Publication date5 Jun. 2014
- Dimensions15.88 x 4.57 x 23.5 cm
- ISBN-101780271387
- ISBN-13978-1780271385
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Review
'Shredded is a magnificent book. I regard it as one of the best investigative books of the past decade' -- Eamonn O'Neill, BBC Radio Scotland
'A gripping account . . . RBS was a rogue business, operating in what had become a rogue industry, with the connivance of government. Read it and weep' -- Martin Wolf, Financial Times
'A model of the journalist's craft, Zola-esque in its broad and unsparing study of corporate hubris and nemesis and haunting in the questions it leaves in its wake' -- Bill Jamieson, Scotsman
'Impeccably researched and hard to put down at any point . . . The author pulls no punches' -- Philip Augar, Financial Times
'Explosive' -- Tom Harper, Independent on Sunday
'Combines Greek tragedy with real-life events that have affected us all. It's hard to put down' -- Devraj Ray, Mortgage Strategy
'I don't think I have ever read such a perfect morality tale for our times' -- Iona Bain, FT Adviser
'The definitive text. I'm thinking of Barbarians at the Gate about Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and RJR Nabisco. An instant classic' -- Max Keiser, The Keiser Report
'You should absolutely read Ian Fraser's Shredded. It is probably the definitive work on the British and Irish banks in the Great Bubble and the ensuing Great Financial Crisis' -- Alexander Harrowell, The Yorkshire Ranter
'Engrossing, fascinating and appalling . . . a fast-paced and sickeningly depressing exposition of what can go wrong when corporate governance fails' -- Ruth Bender, Cranfield University
'Magisterial . . . the most detailed catalogue to date of the errors and misdemeanours leading up to RBS's 2008 collapse and the failure -- in Fraser's view -- to reform the bank in its aftermath' -- Colin Donald, Herald
'A rattling good read. Hubris, nemesis. Truly shocking' -- Paul Rogerson, Law Society Gazette
'A manual for understanding banks, the financial crisis, and also corporate greed and hubris' -- P.C. Dettman
'The definitive account of the RBS fiasco. It's an engaging tale of how self-serving bank executives systematically broke the rules, lent ith astonishing recklessness, abused customers and got suckered by Wall Street - before dumping their mess on the taxpayers' -- Yves Smith, author of Naked Capitalism
'Nearly six years after the bailout, Shredded reminds us how much of banking reform is still a work in progress' -- Nick Dunbar, nickdunbar.net
'Ian Fraser has produced a genuine page turner' -- Alex Marsh, Pieria
'The best financial book I've ever read. Thank you, Ian, for a public service' -- Simon Bain, Herald
'Not just the definitive book on the collapse of RBS but one of the best five books on the great financial collapse which changed the history of the 21st century. Ian pulls no punches in his conclusions' -- Russell Napier, CLSA
'This book should be posted through the letterbox of every taxpayer in Britain' --David Mellor, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury
'Shredded is a monumental book, well written, impeccably researched and hard to put down at any point' --Financial Times
'Not just a book about RBS but about something profound that happened ethically in our country' --Russell Napier, CLSA
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Birlinn Ltd; First Edition (5 Jun. 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 480 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1780271387
- ISBN-13 : 978-1780271385
- Dimensions : 15.88 x 4.57 x 23.5 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 176,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 217 in Finance & Stock Market History
- 419 in Company Histories
- 1,379 in Business & Economic History
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Ian Fraser has worked as a journalist for several decades, writing for titles including The Economist, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Independent, Reuters, Dow Jones, Daily Mail, Herald and Sunday Herald. From 1999 to 2006 he worked for the newly launched, Glasgow-based Sunday Herald as financial editor, closely following developments at the Royal Bank of Scotland. After 2008, he focused on covering the unfolding banking crisis as a freelance, working on several BBC documentaries including the Bafta-nominated RBS: Inside The Bank That Ran Out of Money. He also taught at Stirling University. Before becoming a journalist, Ian worked in the advertising industry in Edinburgh, London and Paris; on a mine in Greybull, Wyoming; and as a jackeroo on a Queensland, Australia sheep station. He was born in Edinburgh, is married with three children, and has a degree in English from St Andrews University. He is working on his second book. Follow Ian on Twitter / X @ian_fraser
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It is interesting to show why politicians get dazzled by money and in effect allowed the banks to write their own rules by persuading politicians of the need to allow something close to a free for all. In the middle of it all is Bill Clinton over in the States who created the conditions that allowed high street and investment banks to merge and become too big to fail and over here his number one fan Tony Blair who had and has little understanding of economics but does have an unhealthy admiration for money and those at the top who control it.
Having set the conditions for inevitable failure - plenty of economists warned that it was going to happen - Brown, Darling and Balls got to work on a bail out that put little onus on the bank to behave in a responsible manner. Even after sucking up billions of tax payers money (the bulk of which we will never see again), staff at the bank were still pursuing one dodgy practice after another.
As a person the left, I was always surprised why Labour let the story run that they had caused the crash given the global nature of the event that is clearly ludicrous but New Labour's love affair with the City was a massive contributing reason. Blair was determined that regulation should be little more than a charade probably in order to demonstrate his avid enthusiasm for Margaret Thatcher's policies. She of course helped create the too big to fail situation with the financial big bang.
I was also struck in this book by the similarities between Fred Goodwin (knighted and feted extensively by Labour) and Blair. Both were intoxicated in their belief that they were always right, never admitted to catastrophic errors even when the facts clearly showed they were wrong and the desire to be surrounded by cronies who would never criticise a thing they did.
It's not even clear if we have learned any lessons. Certainly most of those who caused the problems have not been imprisoned or even charged and slunk off to very comfortable lives.
This is a long book but well written and does not bury the reader in technicalities.
When I bought the book I wasn't sure what to expect. I was concerned that it might be very dry, bombarding the reader with charts, numbers, and obscure terminology. Thankfully my fears were groundless, and the book almost read like a thriller. Most of the chapters are quite short, and if you don't have a background in finance you shouldn't worry about not understanding the book as it's all written in clear language, with no graphs to bamboozle you.
It's shocking to see how the bank lost its way so quickly under the leadership of Fred Goodwin, but the book doesn't flinch and it's almost unputdownable. I must confess that once Goodwin was dispatched I did find it became less interesting, with the attempts to get the bank on track taking up the final section of the book, but it's still interesting all the same.
One thing did spoil the book for me and that was an issue with the Kindle. Maybe it was just my device, but part way through the book the footnotes (there are a lot!) stopped working, and if I tapped one deliberately or accidentally while turning a page I found my Kindle Paperwhite froze then rebooted. As a result I had to be careful where I touched the screen and avoid the footnotes. The book also contains a few pictures, and it's not obvious but they're at the very end, not mentioned in the "Go to" menu, but they're there nonetheless.
A fascinating book, and highly recommended.
At the end of the book I was left angry and ashamed that I live in a country: whose government allowed the events described here to happen knowing that a precedent for the financial events of 2008 had been been set in 1998 yet nobody learned or did anything; that seems to try and slavishly follow the antics and economic philosophy of a country run by an oligarchy of big business.
"Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen." This is a line from Woody Guthrie's song dedicated to a fellow Oklahoman the outlaw, bank-robber and killer, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Floyd was a protagonist of the first half of the line above. Some people praised Floyd for one of his skills robbing banks. Whilst robbing a bank Floyd was known to burn the mortgage documents of bank debtors.
'Shredded' devotes itself to the antics of the persons involved in the RBS debacle, e.g. bankers, traders, estate agents, lawyers, accountants, politicians; businessmen, who follow/followed the mantra indicated in the last half of the above quote. It would appear that all these people are adherents to the "Free market and minimum intervention," teachings of the apostle St. Milton Friedman. Everyone demonstrated their blind adherence faithfully during their involvement in and around RBS for the decade or so leading up to the cataclysmic events of 2008 and some even seemed amazed at what happened. Why? With bank regulation diminished supine governments closed their eyes to, or connived at, the environment that led directly to the economic meltdown of 2008. Despite Friedman's doctrine, only government intervention saved the world's economy in 2008 whilst maintaining the rich's hold on governments. As the book describes nobody, business, government, regulator, appears accountable for their actions in the RBS debacle - is that part of Friedman's ethos? I doubt it .
Yet the events surrounding the 1998 collapse of "Long-Term Capital Management (LTCP) bank, proved to be a forerunner of what was to happen in 2008. If a government bailout had not been forthcoming in 1998 then LTCP's collapse would apparently have triggered events as bad as occurred in 2008. Why did nobody learn from the events of 1998? Heads in the sand? Unwillingness to recognise that even the best brains (LTCP had a multitude of Phd.s) or a "cult of the personality " like Goodwin's at RBS, don't work because nobody has all the answers to all situations because the world is too complicated.
David Kay Johnston's book "A Free Lunch" describes how many of the great US "Free Marketeers", often held up as shining lights, will use as much Local/State/Federal free or cheap money as they can get their hands on, to further their "Free Market Businesses," thus saving themselves having to put "their money where their mouths are."
I always thought a major role of government was looking after its citizens but reading this book changed my opinion in this moral free world.
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All of this was only possible by the lack of valuation risk and social skills of Fred Goodwin, an accountant which hadn't the profile to run an organization like RBS.
The society says the Fred Wage was excessive, I don't think so in theory, he was even underpaid in comparison with other execs of bank and rivals banks, but if it is taken into account the quality of his work the music changes he was an amateur obsessed with growth whatever the price.
Ian Fraser has written a book which will stand up to the passing of time and allows us to look behind the curtain to see what the bankers were actually up to as they produced financial armageddon.



