Let them be Furious

I have just read this in today's Financial Times:

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US law makers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ff2f77e-1584-11de-b9a9-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

My responses are as follows:

• the banking industry has demonstrated a dearth of talent over the last five years
• where are these bankers thinking of going
• who would want them to do what they do so badly
• what makes them persist in the notion that they are any good

To paraphrase WS Gilbert

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I've got a little list, I've got a little list

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed, who never would be missed!

There's the pestilential bankers who contract for bonuses

All financiers who have grubby hands and act like callouses

...

The operative part of that quip from The Mikado is that these bankers "never would be missed".

I would like a few bankers to write here and explain why they feel they deserve their massive salaries and bonuses ON THE BASIS OF THEIR PERFORMANCE. I also want them to exclude any reference to contractual obligations. After all, I am sure I am right in saying that no contract exists which includes the phrase, in the event of the collapse of the bank, no bonus is due or even, in the event of a forced Government bail out of the bank, no bonus is due.

Plonkers they are!

DW