Tuesday 5 August 2014

Getting away with robbery

Bankers' squealing about people being beastly to them is nothing new.  Nor is the idea that people earning vast sums of money for undertaking activities which are of dubious worth at best end up sincerely believing that their salary in some way reflects their ability or value.
But arguing, in effect, that they should be allowed to continue to bend or break the rules as and when it suits them, and take reckless short term decisions in the hope of making a quick buck, and do all that with impunity, is surely an illustration of how far they have become removed from the real economy in which most of us live.
I’m not entirely convinced that the proposals to claw back bonuses for up to seven years go far enough to rein in the gamblers and speculators who masquerade as bankers, but it’s at least a start.  The real requirement is for multinational action to bring the money markets back under control and make them work for society rather than for the bankers.  But the problem we face is that those making the decisions genuinely seem to believe that the crash was just the result of a few bad decisions, rather than an inevitable consequence of the way in which we have allowed people to turn markets into casinos.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

To sort the banks out the politicians just need to stay out of matters.

One small bank disaster will have such a ripple effect throughout the world it'll never happen again. Carnage for a while, yes. Innocent victims, most certainly. Problem solved from then on, without question!

As for private savers, it's up to us to choose wisely. No need for investor protection schemes that just add to the problem.

Isn't it time, and especially at this time, politicians learnt that the best thing to do is to do nothing! Markets are self correcting. Always!

John Dixon said...

"Markets are self correcting. Always!"

All markets work to a set of rules, it just isn't always obvious who's setting them. And they're only self-correcting within the limits of those rules.