Frustration with politicians often has its roots in anger about an issue where politicians talk tough but don’t really deliver. Bank bonuses are a classic example. There is very real anger about this and understandably so.
There is also a very real problem. Financial services and banking are critically important to the UK economy but it is the ultimate example of the global market place and that puts them in a position where they can challenge even very powerful states when it comes to regulation.
Until we get international agreement bank bonuses are likely to continue to have people screaming in protest.
The government is in danger of losing a huge amount of credibility over this. They do not have to intervene in the boardrooms of banks. But there surely is a moral need to have the larger salaries and bonuses disclosed and published for all to see.
Perhaps you should post your salary and tax information for us to see.
After all, if you want to see others, why shouldn’t you start yourself?
Doesn’t sound right does it?
I’ve no employer/employee relationship with you, why should I know or have the right to know? It’s a private deal between yourself and your employer.
Note, when it comes to public sector employees and politicians, the taxpayer is the employer. They should be told.
Likewise with the state owned banks, the owners can say to the company, subject to any existing contract, publish all the amounts.
What’s wrong is for the government to force private companies and individuals to reveal the details.
“Perhaps you should post your salary and tax information for us to see.
After all, if you want to see others, why shouldn’t you start yourself?
Doesn’t sound right does it?” (Lord Blagger).
It certainly doesn’t sound wrong. And I don’t see why it would be objectionable, if it applied to one and all.
I earn £16,000 a year, Lord Blagger, with no savings. Now tell me about yourself.
Many Ancient texts agree, and old Philosophers wrote much the same, that we should never Trust the Banking Interest nor let it get too powerful. Perhaps the problem is that we’ve allowed our entire monetary system to be built on Credit, rather than real assets. This allows the Banks to grow tremendously Powerful.
I do wonder if we could find a way to go back to a Hard Currency, sometimes… I think it’d help.
Until we get international agreement bank bonuses are likely to continue to have people screaming in protest.
An ethical stance is essential; No fat bonuses!
modest pay for modest work.
So lets see with some scenarios.
1. You make 100 million profit for the bank.
Government takes 28 million.
Bank pays you a bonus of 10 million (10% of profits is an average rate)
Government takes another 5 million
You’re left with 5% of the profits.
Shareholders get the most (and pay tax on top)
Then the government.
At the bottom of the pile is the trader.
No wonder the government wants to blame the trader.
Next. Bonuses at failed banks.
You work for RBS, and you make 100 million, reducing the company’s losses, and hence the share holder losses (the government).
So you’ve helped out.
The government as a shareholder effectively gets 95 million out of the deal, the trader gets 5 million.
Who is the fat cat here?
I don`t think you`ll ever see International agreement on bank bonuses.
I have to agree that the telephone number bonuses are odorous given the fact tax payers without their permission bailed out these institutions. Of course had we not bailed them out the repurcussions would have been many and devastating.
It is perhaps more odorous that these institutions are the very ones we`re made to use by Government so they can keep check on our finances, they`re also the ones who are seen to rob us blind. Oh what a wicked web we weave.
Where was any Government to bail out many smaller businesses ? This grates on many self employed.
Banking appears a form of gambling and God knows the Government allows too much of that now, Bingo, online Poker, lotteries, they`ll have to fund gamblers anonymous next. So we bailed out the gamblers when they lost, restaked them and are now letting them take home masses of our cash !
Hold up, would these businesses allow their customers to act like this ? Let`s at least have a decent APR on our loans equivalent to what banks would want. Not forgetting all the charges for the overdraft letters etc.
And you know what, next time because there will be a next time let the buggers sink. Banks and the finance industry are the first to say let business itself make the rules, well you live by sword…..There will be plenty of foreign banks lining upto take there place and lets not start the rubbish that these are British…Look a bit harder.
Bonuses ? Milliband is right keep the 50% tax, if you can`t get by on £1/2 a million tough. I hear even some MP`s have voluntarily not taken a rise why not bankers.
It`s time the banks learnt that no private institution is bigger than Government and it`s time THIS Government stopped let money markets and industry drive it`s policies.
If you want to get industry going again you must ensure the people in the middle and low down have money to spend not take more from them, idiots. The rich have got enough money to pay someone to avoid your taxes ask Philip Green or Lord……..
Forgive my anonymity, Carl.H, but if you want to be taken seriously you really must use the correct key for an apostrophe – it’s the one under the @
The day I`m taken seriously they`ll lock me up. I like ` it appears nearer to how I was taught than ‘ which looks like some irritating insect has crawled under the screen and is laying vertically dead.
I would worry more on the way wot I tork innit !
A-post-rophe?
My reply was quite defensive actually although not agressively so. For 14 odd years I’ve been typing on the internet and although pulled frequently on my use of apostrophes no one thought to tell me I was using a grave accent instead. A common enough mistake I understand, but still.
I shall endeavour to relearn my years of typing which at present seems to have totally messed everything up. I shall then have to retype all 14 years worth as most were serious posts, if only I’d known you were all out there laughing at my imposter apostrophe. 😉
Don’t say “banks can’t pay bonuses.” Just put high rates of income tax in place so that banks can pay bonuses as high as they like but the returns really start to diminish.
The problem is not “banker’s bonuses” but the short-termism encouraged by bubble economics and growing inequality between rich and poor. Short term panaceas targeting specific industries do nothing to solve those two systemic problems — progressive income tax does.
If your bank awards excessive bonuses then look around for a bank that is not so profligate and move your account there.
If enough people did this then they’d start to get the message.
I suppose it would be a lot easier if the BoE printed notes to increase the money supply Weimar style. The Banks would not then earn from the sale of gilts. What I do not understand is the wording of [2] Article 101 (1) (2) that prevents the BoE printing notes anyway unless this falls within the definition of ‘debt instruments’?
The BoE is issuing gilts and they are bought by publicly owned credit institutions which earn from this on a normal commercial basis. The business being transacted is enormous under QE [3] hence the size of the bonuses.
There is a sense of real urgency [1] on two counts: the ONS note [1] explains in Table M1 for fiscal year 2009 that gross consolidated debt as a percentage of GDP was at 55.5% when the reference value for excessive debt is set at 60%. If this threshold is exceeded Article 104 (11) allows the commission to:
“to impose fines of an appropriate size”
The Treasury is then obliged to borrow the fine at the same time it is borrowing to pay huge amounts of interest on that borrowing. There is not much leeway between 55.5% and 60%; just how much worse is this going to get?
Ref: [1] Government deficit and debt under the Maastricht Treaty
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/maast0909.pdf
[2] Maastricht Treaty on EU and of the Treaty Establishing the EC
Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2006:321E:0001:0331:EN:PDF
[3] BoE: Quantitative Easing Explained
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetarypolicy/pdf/qe-pamphlet.pdf
McDuff, though you will balk…
A False balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.-Proverbs 11:1
Progressive Income Taxes are really not just. They basically tax you a higher percent if you earn more and simply jeep you from being successful. I’ve always thought a better system is a flat Income Tax rate. If everyone had 10% taken out of their pay, that’d be fair. The actual Pound Amount goes up if you earn more, but not he percent.
That said, if we’d simply shift away from a Credit based economy, and to one based on currency backed by something with Real Value, like Gold, Silver, and Copper, and perhaps Petrol and other resources, we could also avoid these Bubble Economies.
An aside:
As I was xlsing down readying for my bed at 11.30 p.m. I caught Lord Soley in debate on the Voting and Constituency Bill. I did feel a little sympathetic toward those still up and debating in a lively manner.
What have you done to your hand ? I noticed it bandaged ?
It is ludicrous that a government, of any colour, cannot demand what a bank would demand of a lender. Full repayment on a ‘loan’ prior to a huge self payout.
This should be paid before any further bankers receive bonuses of any kind. If the bank in question took public funds in order to remain in business, then all those ‘public funds’ should be returned prior to any further bonus being given. And from there on regulations that will put a stop to trade or deal that will bring any bank back to the situation they arrived in prior to needing public funds. Our money (tax payers)is not made available to governments in order to give gambling stakes to any company, regardless of the plea that it will save us all from ruin.. What kind of a hogwash is that?
The banks received tax payers money, they have no automatic right to ask for this favour without a deal to pay back every penny borrowed. To do other is a farce.
Stop playing around as if the people are fools. Get our social funds returned to us on demand, just as the banks do when they lend. All these stalling tactics are counter productive and childish.
This present government is too full of inexperienced ‘boys’ to deal in the real world of finance and they should all be thrown out of office. Unless, of course, they are on the fiddle and are in line for some kind of pay off, either now, or, in the future, as per the traitor Blair. Only then can you find a real motive for their present banking game play.
There are some consequences of that.
1. If you are at a failed bank, where the failure is in the Mortgage department, but you are, say an options trader. Lets say you make the bank 100 million. That goes a long way to paying back the bailout. As it stands you might get 10%, of which the government will take another 5%. You’re left with 5 million. The government gets 95.
What do you do if the 5 million doesn’t come your way?
Where is the bank going to find another trader that can make 100 million? Tescos checkout perhaps.
The real problem is the scum in government who’ve taken your pension contributions and blown it. All of it, and still managed to run up 6,800 billion of debts. The banks have cost 27 bn in comparison
Having worked amongst traders in the City, watching the Eastend boys gamble and then burn out, they`re nothing but gamblers. OK so they`re reasonable poker players, who also know how to party and gamble with their freedom at times with their habits.
They do I agree make money and they don`t care how they do it in most cases and you think all this is just cause ?
If the trader doesn`t like the fact that his bonus is less I really don`t care, he still has plenty. If he want`s to go to Switzerland go. I`d rather go skint and that`s what Government doesn`t understand, the people of this Country don`t mind having a tough time provided the right things are done. Get this most people don`t want the EU and knowbusiness will suffer – we don`t care, we want sovereignty, we want our own laws, WE WANT TO BE IN CONTROL.
Nice little trick with the sums Blagger but the government wouldn`t get 95 million would they ? How much do the people whose money you used get ? How much the Bank ?
“What do you do if the 5 million doesn’t come your way?”
The same as my daughter at RBS who was promised a £1000 bonus for sales that didn`t materialise. Shout for a bit and go back to work !
We already are ruled by Europe. And in most cases thank goodness for that.
Switzerland is a country we should emulate not denigrate. They have the truest form of democracy we can only hope for, not the farce called ‘sovereignty’ many are panting over here to hang on to. Ruled by this term of phrase is to be ruled by dynastic families. Is this what you term freedom for democracy? To be subjects, or, to use a better term, serfs, to the Lords of the Manor?
If your daughter was fiddled by the bank she works for, then she should up and leave. If all their employees did that, these banks could not function on the duplicity they currently employ. For there would be no one to provide them with the means to do it.
What people in this country fail to comprehend is the power in their collective hands. If they put up with being conned by con men, then they will continue to be so abused.
The other most important issue the ‘Luddite’ mentality of Brits find hard to follow is, no taxation without representation. And presently the people of this ‘sovereign’ state are not in the remotest way receiving representation. Unless, of course, you belong to the dynasty who recently received a huge and outrageous state payout to fund their growing offspring, who really want to be anything but part of that dynasty, as shown by marriage. Except, when they stand with their hands out to receive public funds. (I’m sure you are aware the Palace requested a payment from charity funds set up to enable the poor to receive assistance to cover their utility bills.) This April wedding ensures ‘the dynasty’ will no longer have a preponderance of regal blood. In fact, we shall be expected, without one look of embarrassment, to curtsy to a miners granddaughter, whose looks are fading fast. Is this your idea of sovereignty?
The majority of the public here are not up for returning to a life of servitude, regardless of the spouting nonsense put to it by the Daily Mail. At the same time, they are not looking for the futility of the Guardian to run their life either.
Europe is the only sane answer to this dilemma and what a sensible government would be seeking to do, is take maximum power in the proposed united states of Europe. Fiddling like Nero as we burn on the sidelines is for fools.
But there are none as ready to be conned as those who willingly accept it.
Banking appears a form of gambling
Capitalism itself depends on a gamble; it demoralizes those who become involved in it as players, encouraging greed and thence violence.
“Gandhi once said that there is enough in this world for the need of everyone; but not for the greed of anyone”
“Violence comes from our ego mind which is a false mind and has selfish tendencies, insecurities, fear, hatred, aggression and competition. It is entirely centered on the self and believes the only way to happiness is through acquisitions of power and material possessions.”
Interesting – thank you all.
Carl H Thank you for the sympathy vote! What did I do to get my hand in bandages? I went ice skating without the skates! I did a pretty dramatic fall in the recent cold weather. It’s not broken (or I don’t think it is) but I don’t approve of breaking my bones ergo it is NOT broken!! Will power counts for everything!