Guardian UK: We attacked the bankers, but took our eyes off the whole rotten system

[marmar]

We attacked the bankers, but took our eyes off the whole rotten system
Prince Andrew says that bonuses are minute 'in the scheme of things'. He is half-right. We must take the focus off individuals


Gary Younge
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 October 2009


'I was in this game for the money," wrote Andrew Lahde, a hedge fund manager, in a letter to the Financial Times last year as the global economy went into meltdown. "The low hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking.

"These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received), rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only made it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God Bless America."

The fruit doesn't hang much lower than Prince Andrew. The best education money can buy and an intellect worthy of the gene puddle from which he was fished. Few look on him for leadership. But the apparent absence of a filter that might temper the more blatant expressions of his regal privilege, makes him an interesting indicator of class entitlement at times. "I don't want to demonise the banking and financial sector. Bonuses, in the scheme of things, are minute," he told the Daily Telegraph this weekend.

"They are easy to target. A number will have abused their privilege of a bonus, so get rid of the excesses, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water." For a man who used £30,000 of taxpayers' money for a 50-mile helicopter ride so that he could have lunch with Arab dignitaries, the million-dollar bonuses received by bankers probably do seem trifling. But the rest of us see extortionate rewards for incompetent people not as the "abuse of privilege" but of abusive privilege – wanton venality embedded in a corrupt system. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/25/banking-economic-crisis-public-anger

[mule_train]

1. rules for tech worker pay vs wall street pay

tech worker pay rules - no matter how much value you produce, your pay must go down as long as somewhere in India, there is someone who will work for less

wall street pay rules - no matter how muuch damage you do, no matter how much every family in America has to pay to bail you out, your astronomical pay must increase as long as there is someone soemwhere on wall street who makes ever more

dictatorship

[PM Martin]

2. K & R to that if there was such an option!

:thumbsup:

[Bozita]

3. None of the rules have changed. Continue as before. And they are.

Waiting for the next bubble to burst.