Monday, Oct 26, 2009
One small step on the road to recovery.
London Evening Standard: City fury at George Osborne’s bonus war on bankers
George Osborne faced howls of anguish from the City today after calling for a clampdown on big bonuses.
The shadow chancellor wants the regulators to take action now to ban high street banks from giving big cash payments as rewards.
Mr Osborne said he was talking about "emergency measures this Christmas", adding: "Let's end the big cash bonuses. If there's spare cash at the bank it should be lent out to small businesses, medium businesses, to help people keep their jobs.
Posted by devo @ 09:25 AM (488 views) Add Comment
6 Comments
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1. 51ck-6-51x said...
Alt: Lying politician attempts to win votes by proposing unworkable idea.
Whatever next?
2. Enough Already said...
I'm with Osborne on this one. They don't deserve their obscene bonus payment - in any other industry they'd be out of a job for such incompetence. If they threaten to 'leave London' let them p1ss off - see how many other countries want these overpaid narcissistic incompetents.
3. mr g said...
"it infuriated bankers who warned that successful financiers would move abroad if they felt they were being unfairly targeted"
How many times have we heard the threat that city boys will move abroad?
Call their bluff and let the parasites b*gger off.
4. mdmick said...
I wonder what proportion of their assets are already abroad...
I guess the unworkability of it would be like what happened with that guy a few months ago who was legally able to keep his big pension golden goodbye package thing: the law of Contract.
5. mdmick said...
I also think that the credit ratings system deserves a lot of the attention.
It is hard to give an accurate credit rating to a complex financial instrument.
So maybe the focus should be on preventing great big complex leveraged financial instruments from being packaged in safely rated products.
It would to some extent tie the hands of the people who are putting investors' money into high risk products.
And it seems to me that the cleverness to organise these highly complex financial instruments or the cleverness to copy the behaviour of those clever people ... is the justification for paying out the large bonuses.
So, solving one issue to some extent lessens the other issue.
6. iguana said...
So.....Boy George has had another good idea.
Is he really saying that bonuses should be in the form of shares? Surely a bonus paid in cash attracts tax at the point of payment at the tax rate applicable to the recipient (must be the higher rate? ). Now then, what tax at what rate is applicable to the selling of shares........let me think.
I seem to recall that the payment in shares option was used by some 'flighty' bankers as a means of tax avoidance, so is 'Boy' proposing that we pay the same bonuses but in a form that attracts less tax?
Shoorly not, how very dare you.