Failed banks are lining up a christmas bonanza for their incompetent staff. The RBS has set aside billions of taxpayers money to pay bonusus. Other state owned banks will likely do the same.
This really is as bad as it looks. These banks are, for all practical purposes, insolvent. The government has injected billions of pounds, and this money is about to disappear as cash payments to staff.
Can the management of our bankrupt banks really be that stupid? Do they have any idea of the anger they will provoke if they go ahead and pay bonuses this year?
8 comments:
I don't think they have a choice. Unless a bonus is actually tied in to real financial gains, not illusory vodoo gains, then legally, they may be obliged to cough up. Are the banks going to say that a bonus will be paid at the end of the financial year based on genuine success? That'll be a no.
But who will blink first? gordon or the banks.
There will be riots ... but where will the bankers be ?
On their financial life rafts ?
Just a quick question, has the government actually injected this cash into the banks? I remember there was talk about the government taking a shareholding but I haven't heard of it actually going through...
The financial disservices sector is just too big, and needs to contract. If the recapitaisation allows the wages budget to stay high, then the process of contraction - and the reemergence of the economy in a healthy configuration - is delayed.
Bankers have to be told to do something useful which genuinely merits a salary, not be allowed to do the little of real worth that they have been doing and to excessively milk the pot of customer and shareholder cash in their bank, just because it is possible to do this from their position of power.
The longer we allow a bloated financial sector to remain, the longer we will be in the doldrums - that has been the Japanese expeience since their collapsed asset bubble.
B. in C.
You really can't make this stuff up. The irony is fantastic!
It strikes me that the management are merely continuing with a strategy that has been successful to date: while they can get away with milking the situation, do so.
The fact that the banks are in financial difficulty does not suggest to me that caution is the order of the day. Quite the converse, this might be the last opportunity for a long time - so, they have to make the best of it.
Dare I say money is fungible, and therefore you can't determine whether the money they are spending on bonuses is there own or the governments?
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