JILL STEPHENSON
suggests that bankers should forego their bonuses in a good cause
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Give it to charity
I am faced with a conundrum. An economist at UBS called George Magnus tells us that the British banks have plenty of money. The choice about what to do with the sloshing dosh seems to be between – on the one hand – paying bankers bonuses to ensure that they can continue to live in the opulent style to which they have become accustomed, and, in their view, entitled, and – on the other hand – lending it to 'customers'. At the same time (and featuring in the same edition of 'The World At One' by Magnus), we are told that women who are not classed as 'poor' are to lose the vouchers which have given them tax relief on what they pay for childcare to enable them to work. This is because, we are told, the current economic slump necessitates a 'squeeze' on public spending. I have heard that even the pensioner's bus pass is under threat. If anyone cancels my bus pass, I shall riot.
The option that does not seem to have been considered is having the banks repay the Treasury (i.e. the taxpayer, i.e. us) some of the wads of cash used to rescue them only a matter of months ago. Are memories so short that bankers and politicians have forgotten what happened? Are their thought processes so blinkered that they still don’t get it? The public and private sectors alike are contracting because irresponsible bankers lost millions, even billions, of pounds. People working in areas far removed from finance are losing their jobs or having their pay frozen (or even cut).
This time, I don't get it. Why is everyone else having to suffer for errors committed by these people? Apparently, senior bankers 'need' hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, of pounds in order to live comfortably. Tell that to your neighbourhood postman. Apparently, bankers need to be – in that ugly term – 'incentivised' to do their job.
Again, tell that to your postman. More important, apparently, is the risk that non-incentivised bankers will, in this global marketplace, leave Britain and go elsewhere. If only – as in, if only they had gone elsewhere before they brought the financial system crashing down about us all.
There is an alternative to bankers reimbursing the Treasury, and it does not entail the payment of bonuses. In this economic crisis, one of the sectors to be hardest hit has been the charitable sector. A variety of charities report that their income has dropped dramatically as those of us who have bailed out the banks reduce our spending because of that. The honourable thing for bankers to do is to forego bonuses and for banks to pay handsomely into the coffers of a range of charities. But there's a catch here: who on earth would expect to find the words 'bankers' and 'honourable' in the same sentence?
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