I once heard a ‘radio expert’ say that most successful business people would be diagnosed as sociopaths if they were not rich. He confirmed my prejudices, so I was reluctant to decide this was one of those media facts – announced confidently, but with nothing to substantiate them. Today’s news has me wondering whether he was right after all.

First, there was yesterday’s news that nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland is going to pay out £1.3 billion in bonuses. More than 100 RBS bankers are going to get bonuses of over a million pounds. They lost £3.6 billion last year, but that was “lower than expected” so that’s all right then. Read more »

   Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

On Tuesday I responded to a Times piece that effectively said that the only cost to the UK of the bank crash was the money spent rescuing RBS, Lloyds and Northern Rock.

Yesterday the same argument appeared in the Guardian in an anonymous article by a “banker”, headlined “not all bankers are fat cats”. Nowhere in the article does this “banker” say exactly what he does in banking. Read more »

   Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | No Comments »

Simon Culhane is the chief executive of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment. Its website describes it thus:

(CISI) is the largest and most widely respected professional body for those who work in the securities and investment industry in the UK and in a growing number of major financial centres round the world.

I think we can conclude therefore that quite a lot of his members get big bonuses.

In the Times today he has possibly the silliest piece I have read on the recession. He argues that:

Banks are the scapegoat for politicians’ mismanagment” Read more »

   Filed under: Financial crisis, Tax, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

CBI Director General Richard Lambert has a hissy fit in the Financial Times today complaining that Sir David Hare’s theatrical summary of business is unfair, stupid and just plain wrong. All Hare said was that the aim of business was to make money, which seems pretty uncontentious. But Lambert takes umbrage – in a thinly veiled alternative to the recent and widely lampooned “doing God’s work” remark, he complains that business just isn’t that simple (because it’s difficult to make money, see? Read more »

   Filed under: They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has written a just fabulous assault on the bankers formerly known as ‘Masters of the Universe’ for the New York Times. Considering the testimony of Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this week, he concluded, right on the money, that politicians engaged in deciding how to regulate the financial sector should ignore its leading proponents. Not just because they’re bound to be greedy, rapacious, morally incontinent partisans. But because they don’t actually know what they’re doing.

Are they still ‘Masters of the Universe’? No. But what they are rhymes with bankers.

   Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | 2 Comments »

The Financial Times says Lord Mandelson’s manufacturing strategy is failing to convince manufacturing employers. But they use journalistic sleight of hand to make the evidence fit the story better, suggesting that the FT editorial line of support for tax cutting Tories rather than Labour investors has bled into the news pages.  Read more »

   Filed under: Manufacturing, Recession, They Just Don't Get It | 2 Comments »

The usually rational Howard Davies suggests in today’s FT that EU Commissioners should be chosen the same way major businesses choose their leaders. So, that means no women, an emphasis on management guff rather than results, and ever increasing salaries in the hope that mutual back scratching will result in the winners rewarding the people who picked them. When will the corporate world realise that it’s not much of a role model?

   Filed under: Europe, They Just Don't Get It | Comments Off

The Times Diary reports a new City fad:

“An organisation is trying to organise “flash sushi” parties, at which you get to eat raw fish off naked women’s bodies. You pay your fee and only 24 hours beforehand do you learn where the party is taking place. This is the done thing among very rich Japanese, and I suppose three years or so ago it would not have turned a hair in the City.

But it is surely inconceivable that anyone today, however overpaid and stupid, could sign up for such a degrading charade. Isn’t it? Oh. I see the first four events are sold out.”

They just don’t get it, do they?

   Filed under: They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

The TUC made the headlines with our analysis of the cost of higher rate tax relief on pensions.

Now insurance company Aviva have called for the abolition of higher rate tax relief with the money saved to provide tax relief of 30% for all pensions savings. Read more »

   Filed under: Pensions, They Just Don't Get It | 6 Comments »

With TUC Congress only weeks away we are all too busy to do much blogging at the moment, but this is too good to miss.

There is of course much comment on Adair Turner’s splendid remarks on finance, including serious arguments on both sides. But then there is this:

Howard Wheeldon, of the stockbroking firm BGC Partners, said Turner had moved beyond his brief in making those comments and it would be “time to turn the lights out in the UK” if the tax were imposed. “Quite honestly I am appalled, disgusted, ashamed and hugely embarrassed that I should have lived to see someone … who already commands a senior and crucially important position as effective head of the UK regulatory regime, making such damaging and damning remarks.”

They don’t like it up ‘em, do they?

   Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »