Friday 18 December 2009

My Rant - Bankers again...

The top plonker at Barclays Bank, John Varley, has said that the one off tax on bonus payments to bankers will damage the standing of the UK finance industry. He is concerned that the individuals likely to be affected will defect, leave to work in other countries - which just goes to prove how out of touch these overpaid ivory tower clad individauls are.

We trust these people to handle our money as trustees. Where they provide us with additional services they charge us hansomely for doing so. Then, while we go about our lives they grab our cash and "invest" it - their term for some very dubious forms of gambling, and when they get it wrong then we are the ones that suffer. How? With job losses, plundered pension funds, reduced interest (income) from savings and restricted credit (though that may possibly not be a totally bad outcome).

So why should we want to retain these plonkers - who created all the current economic problems? Why would we want to pay them even bigger bonuses for GAMBLING with our money? Why would we want to stop them going abroad? More to the point, why woud foreign banks want to emply our plonkers knowing that they have such an appalling track record?

If the bankers were in the position that many of us working outside of the banking/finance industry are in then they would (in my view) have reason to gripe. But they aren't. They are still expecting, and mostly getting, inflated, unwarranted and unearned salaries and bonuses. For years bankers have refused to aadvance investment funds to inject into British industry and IT development. They have been a driving force behind moving jobs off-shore. As taxpayers we have bailed out their industry and shored up their jobs, and now they want our sympahy!

Sorry - the sympathy cupboard is bare, and if they think they can do better elsewhere they go - I for one will be glad to see them go.

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