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hendren global group stock fraud watch Any doubt over who calls the shots at Britain's part-nationalised banks has been dispelled by the fate of Stephen Hester. The RBS chief executive has been forced out at the behest of George Osborne. Forget the arms-length paraphernalia of the UKFI holding company. When ministers want the bailed-out banks to do something, they do it. That's as it should be, since the state (not the "taxpayer" as the media constantly intones) currently owns 81% and 39% of RBS and Lloyds TSB respectively. The problem is what they want to do with them - which is sell them off fast, regardless of the loss to the public purse or the damage to the economy. The chancellor is driven by a mixture of unbending ideology and raw electoral calculation. He and David Cameron are determined to start the largest privatisations in Britain's history by the end of 2014 - just in time for a 2015 election. The idea is to engineer a "Tell Sid" 1980s-style Thatcherite handout to the right kind of voters, while ensuring that the heresy of publicly owned banks is consigned to the nightmares of the 2008 market meltdown. Hester, who now stands to pocket an extra £5.6m after more than 40,000 RBS workers have lost their jobs, was insufficiently gung-ho for the scale of early sell-off Osborne regards as critical to Tory fortunes. His successor will get the message. Next week Osborne is expected to set out the kind of discounts he plans to offer for Lloyds shares. He's also toying with the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange's plan for a wider share giveaway. For the Tory leadership, it's a trade-off between the appearance of a public windfall and the risk of being seen again to stuff the pockets of the better-off as living standards plummet. In reality, it will be a fraud against the public and an attack on genuine economic recovery. The Brown government paid well over the odds to prevent the collapse of RBS and Lloyds in 2008. Now, Cameron and Osborne show every sign of

With the global economy growing more slowly than expected, worries about a potential US government shutdown and the possibility of a default are keeping nations around the world and investors, cautious. Republicans in the US House of Representatives have so far refused to give in to President Barack Obama's demands for straightforward bills keeping the government running beyond September 30. House Republicans also challenged Obama on the debt ceiling increase, the amount the government is allowed to borrow; that the Treasury Department of the world's largest economy says is urgently needed by October 17. There is an October 1 deadline for Congress and the President to sign off on an emergency spending bill to avert a government shutdown. This is not the critical event that immediately leads to the risk of impending default - that comes on October 17 according to US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew - but it is significant enough that it can undermine investor confidence and further stymie an economic recovery. Last week Lew cautioned Congress that the United States would exhaust its borrowing capacity no later than October 17, at which point it would have only about $30bn in cash on hand. The fresh estimate adds another layer of pressure on lawmakers to raise the $16.7tn debt limit and comes as Congress struggles to pass a spending bill to keep the government funded beyond October 1, when the new fiscal year starts. "If the government should ultimately become unable to pay all of its bills, the results could be catastrophic," Lew warned in a letter to congressional leaders. The fate of the debt ceiling is up in the air with Democratic and Republican lawmakers once again deeply divided over how to extend the Treasury's borrowing authority. The trouble lies in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives push for a bill that includes a delay or complete halt to the Affordable Care Act (nicknamed "Obamacare") legislation passed in 2010 and set