FT: Some of my best friends are bankers

Martin Wolf of the FT writes "By paying huge bonuses on the basis of short-term performance in a system in which negative bonuses are impossible, banks create gigantic incentives to disguise risk-taking as value-creation.

Yet individual institutions cannot change their systems of remuneration on their own, without losing talented staff to the competition. So regulators may have to step in. The idea of such official intervention is horrible, but the alternative of endlessly repeated crises is even worse.

I understand that the bankers will not like this. Yet one thing is surely now quite clear: just as war is too important to be left to generals, banking is too important to be left to bankers, however much one may like them."

I agree, banks played big part in our hp bubble.