Banking bonuses: Combating the culture of greed

Yes by all means, lets see an end to the banking bonus culture but first you must ask yourself some questions. Whose steers HMS Britannia, an elected government or the Treasury?

Should this article be renamed:

Government greed and ambition: Combating the Culture of Greed.

Will the helmsman really allow such a large loss of tax revenue?

Answers on a postcard to 'I wish' c/o Father Christmas, North Pole.

Yes some of these things are 'high risk' but the real issue is that when things go wrong it is not those taking the risk that really suffer.

Ok so they loose their job, but in the scheme of things this is fairly mild when set against their losses being 'mutualised' over the whole population, so that everyone takes on a measure of their risk, whether they want to or not.

If these people want to take on a risk where they are the only ones to suffer the downside then that is just fine - but this is never the case!

To a large extent we are talking about a gamble (in one form or another) and given the opportunity to gain £xx million or loose ones job a high percentage of people would go for the £xx m risk; that is human nature

Anyway this is not a new concept and there are great similarities to Barings (remember Nick Leason) http://www.rba.gov.au/PublicationsAndResearch/Bulletin/bu_nov95/bu_1195_1.pdf - Gordon Brown should have been acutely aware of this disaster but the problem is that he was more interested in 'cosying' up to the City than regulating them sensibly

Once one starts securitising problems in order to sell them off, then you loose sight of the risk and the whole thing spirals - refer Lloyd's of London LMX spiral. Basically it is a game of 'pass the risk', make a turn along the way and hope that you are not still holding it when the music stops......

Frankly the FSA is a waste of time & this Government is completely out of its depth

As for risk assessment - seems to be back to the drawing board again with the familiar plaintif cry of 'lets learn from our mistakes and move on'; how many times have we heard this mantra when no-one wants to face up to the problems ???

'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose'

Gordon was explicit - I want to save them, not run them. Now he is trying to run them. He is spinning the bonus story to hide his own mistakes. And you fell for it!