Banking is after all a global business and the brightest can – and will – move to where the best deals are found.Liberal England replies: Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
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Monday, September 28, 2009
Capping bankers bonuses
Angela Knight - chief executive of the British Bankers' Association - has a piece on Comment is Free today arguing against the capping of bankers' bonuses:
Why not second (exile) all the grasping bankers to Iran to work on their economy thus achieving the ruination of the regime and punishment of the bankers, with the added bonus of the potential for some mutilation by the loss of the odd hand or limb.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it is quite bewildering that the Bankers just don't get it do they? Their greed nearly brought down the western economies and yet they still expect to get bonus recompense. As you say - off you go folk and close the door after you.
I was almost screaming at the radio when there was a 'vox pop' interview with a number of bankers coming out of Canary Wharf. First, one of them said:
ReplyDelete'I don't see why we shouldn't get bonuses if we earn our company millions of pounds each year'
...missing entirely the fact that they have LOST their company millions this year, billions collectively, and have helped drag down the world economy in the process. One of the unfortunate effects of the government bailout is to insulate these chaps (and they are nearly all chaps) from the starkness of the position which their institutions would be in if it were not for government intervention.
And, of course, they aren't really creating millions of pounds, that money comes in different ways from investors, workers, entrepreneurs, and so on. Not them.
The second one raised the same point: 'we'll leave the country if you curb bonuses!'
Now, this is hardly a talent drain. It takes bugger all time to train a merchant banker - there is no specialist qualification, demonstrated by the fact that many of them are simply the most greedy individuals to come out of a three-year English course at Oxford or Cambridge. Compared to the time it takes to become an engineer (these years, it's a four year course), or a doctor (five years in medical school is only the beginning), the necessary level of training is very low, simply basic intelligence. Fact is, we could probably sweep the streets right now and find 100 people capable to becoming one.
Tut.
ReplyDeleteEven in Rutland, the proper spelling is arse.
I was affecting an Americanism, don't cha know?
ReplyDeleteI was also wondering what Angela Knight's donkey had done to merit such treatment ......
ReplyDeleteIn the mid 1980s trading floor bosses were hiring barrow boys off the streets: sharp minds, you see. It disgusted the old public school elite.
ReplyDelete