GEORGE Osborne has been criticised for making huge sums for short talks to the City firms he helped so much while Chancellor.

After the financial crash, Osborne did little to regulate or reign in the firms that broke the world economy. They show their gratitude with applause and big cheques for his appearances.

It is worth looking back a few years to understand how bad Osborne’s paymasters are.

Osborne got £85,000 for two speeches to Citi Bank in November, taking just three hours of his time.

The same Citi paid a $285 million (£224.3m) fine because they misled investors into buying “a pile of dogsh!t” [sic] .

Citi Bank were one of the main culprits in the financial collapse. In 2007 alone, they sold $20 billion (£15.7bn) of “instruments” made up of dodgy mortgages. These “collaterised debt obligations” (CDOs) — bundles of mortgages that low income Americans could never pay — promptly went down the plughole. They sucked the world economy down with them. We are still paying. US taxpayers shelled out $45bn (£35.4bn) to keep Citibank afloat. The rest of us are suffering economic stagnation, because the bubble pumped up with Citi’s dodgy mortgages burst, tearing holes in the world economy.

But Citi knew their investments were crap all along. US financial regulators from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Citi with cheating. They took one sample CDO that Citi sold for a billion dollars. According to one trader’s email quoted by the SEC, Citi knew it was “a pile of [dog shit].” Citi didn’t tell investors they had carefully selected the “[dog shit].” A less sweary Citi manager said: “The portfolio is horrible.” Nor did Citi tell investors it was actually betting that the investment would fail. Citi “shorted,” or bet against, its own product. One Citi trader’s email called it “possibly the best short EVER!”

Citi’s product failed, leaving investors stuffed and the market collapsing. But Citi made $160m (£125.9m) from fees and from their own bet on the failure of their “product.”

In 2011 the SEC accused Citi of “misleading investors.” Citi paid the $285 million fine to settle the case. So Osborne’s retirement means performing for the “dogsh!t” salesmen.