Bank bonuses

In message , thedarkman writes

They're far too powerful to be controlled now, since the Financial Sector became a bigger earner than manufacturing. (Thanks, Maggie, thanks Tony).

Interesting. The voices are terrible though.

Bet on the right number at the casino table?

Not even the right number..

They scratch each others' backs.

They do precisely what Premier League players, musicians and top-rank salesmen do. They do things that others can't. If one man, armed only with a desk and a telephone, can increase a bank/company's net profits by £100m, he is certainly 'worth' £10m. It doesn't matter if it's a bank, a record company, an aerospace/pharmaceuticals company or a football/baseball club.

This suggests that you are wrong:

or

Like destroy the whole economy, and leave us with an enormous deficit? In retrospect, perhaps GB should have let a few banks go to the wall.

Unfortunately that money has to originate from someone else's sweat.

I wasn't talking about stock-picking. I was talking about one bloke having the quality of client-list, and the track-record, to transform a bank's bottom-line. If that bloke can take a client-list of triple-A institutions and/or billionaires to either Bank ABC, Bank DEF or Bank XYZ, he has immense negotiating potential. He can very easily generate billions in new business, which means countless millions in net revenue and he is undoubtedly 'worth' a massive bonus. Otherwise, the business goes down the road to the competition.

The analogy with football was supposed to make it simple for the hard of thinking. Films are another example, with Tom Cruise supposedly 'worth' $20m a picture because he can attract the investors. The crucial difference is that footballers and film-stars are paid upfront and can fail after they have been paid, whereas bankers are paid on performance.

Except that when he loses them £100m (or a lot more), he certainly doesn't have to pay his employer £10m. He just picks up another £10m, a year later, after the bank's been bailed out by tax-payers, and is allowed to make more obscene profits.

Apparently the traders are fighting the Fed and forcing the US$ up according to Bloomberg.