I'm about to stick my head above the parapet here. On the morning that the government takes up huge chunks of banking shares and injects huge amounts of public money into private companies, I want to urge a little restraint.
Being angry with this situation is natural and justified, so is the anger aimed at some of the people involved. However what is not acceptable is the indiscriminate nature of the blame that is being flung around.
The blame game is easy to play and is always popular, it doesn't make it right. Taking the actions of a few individuals within a group to define the whole group is lazy and dangerous, it is bad enough when this is done by individuals but done at governmental level it's really worrying. Governments make laws, decisions and set the tone, if not done with a clear head more problems can be created than solved.
Where individuals have failed they should take responsibility for their actions but most banking employees are worrying about keeping their jobs rather than looking forward to big bonuses. The money that they were making was being taxed and spent, accounting for a significant part of the UK economy. Capping pay and bonuses will be popular, few people feel that people in the city deserve the big money that they have received in the recent past but it may prove to be totally counterproductive.
If we get too hair shirt about the city we run the risk of driving much of our future prosperity overseas. We have all benefited from the money generated by the financial services sector and if we lose sight of that in our rush to vilify we will all suffer.
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1 comments:
The majority of people working in the financial services industry are perfectly decent people but for too long the system has been driven by short-termism, short-selling, and bad risk analysis.
Those banks and bankers who have followed the heard and lost so many individuals vast amounts of savings, pensions, and investments deserve to loose at least what they investors have lost - all of their gains over the last ten years! Failing that let's have a complete cap on city bonuses for this year. There is no reason for bonuses of £8 billion to be paid.
Only the heads of Northern Rock and RBS have resigned. We should be seeing the termination of many more senior executives in failing banks, just as has happening in the US. Why are people so willing to defend these lazy and dangerous individuals?
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