The reason for anti-banker fury
Please don't use my name, they plead. Every single banker I have interviewed recently has demanded anonymity. Financial types are being demonised by the media, they explain.
That's rubbish.
Yeah, so we describe them as "slime-sucking scum from the lowest pits of hell", but why take that negatively? We mean it affectionately.
On the other hand, when it comes to despised professions, journalists are kind of happy not to be top of the league table for once.
Most nervous about being identified are bankers who have received bonuses. I know one who gave his bonus away, but strangely, not to me.
"It's all semantics," a nervous banker said to me over a coffee (which he paid for). "In the dictionary, 'bonus' means something extra, but that's not what it means in finance."
"So what does it mean?" I asked skeptically. "Is it a species of lizard? A small town in Latvia?" (Being facetious may be the lowest form of wit, but no other forms were available that early in my day, by which I mean the crack of noon.)
"In the finance business, your bonus is just a deferred part of your pay," he said. "The delay forces you to hang around and not run off to do something else."
"So, let me guess, you would much rather have worked as an unpaid volunteer building toilets for slum dwellers?" I said.
"Yeah, that's right," he said. "How did you know? Anyway, the deferred payment forces you to work really hard, so we are up for 7 am meetings, we're there till late at night. We work weekends. We have no lives. We have no fun. We have no friends."
"You got me," I said.
"That's what I mean," he said darkly. "Anyway, bonuses are not 'extras'. Retention pay is written into the contract and we've worked for it."
Warming to his theme, he thumped the table.
This was a bad idea, since the table was about the size of a plate, and the edge of his fist landed in a vanilla slice, causing fake cream to spurt over his Bally shoes.
"We should get sympathy, not abuse. How would you feel if you did your job, got paid late, and then everyone criticized you?"
"I'm a journalist. Getting paid late and being criticized is my whole life," I replied.
This guy's argument was true but irrelevant. Whether you call it "bonus" or "deferred pay" makes no difference.
The public is annoyed that bankers get yachts and sports cars and big apartments, while the rest of us don't.
For years we put up with it because they told us that what they did made everyone richer. Now we find out that it has made us all poorer. No wonder everyone's hopping mad.
One reader put it this way: "In 1980, an average Fortune 500 CEO made 40 times more than the average person who worked for him or her. By 2008 it was more than 500 times more."
My suggestion was that all AIG people in the US immediately move to Asia. In this region, the rich are not resented or criticised.
"Because Asians respect money?" he asked.
I said: "No. It's because rich people here live in walled compounds with massive guard dogs."
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