What's a banker worth? - Peter Valentine

They just don't get it do they and what's worse they are seriously misleading normally sensible folks like you and I! I refer, of course, to the Banking community, although rumour has it that they don't call themselves Bankers if they can avoid it. Nowadays you will be talking

to an investment advisor or a financial consultant; I think I would prefer to be called "something in the City". Anyway while you and I wonder what to save on to ensure our budget is balanced, perhaps with a little in reserve to help the younger ones who are usually far

more over exposed than we pensioners are, these somethings are designing ways to lend the same loan to hedge funds, deposit swaps, sub prime instruments and so on.
 
In other words we are seeing "business as usual" and we are being told that thousands of clever somethings are needed to throw the ball into the roulette machine, extract the winnings, and pay themselves bonuses; or if they make a losing throw find the government

who will cover the loss! And all that activity counts as GDP. If it were not so serious it would be amusing. The trouble is that regulation seems to be a word missing in the EU, USA and naturally the UK, despite what we were promised.
 
I could have had some patience at the delay if it wasn't for the squadrons of Chairmen lining up to insist that it is essential to pay bonuses to their particular bunch of somethings. And those Chairmen seem unable to grasp that most of the population can only see

their taxes being used to prop up the Banks and apparently fund the bonuses paid. If that thought alone was not enough to disgust the men in the street, and me, then the question of what is a something worth leaps up. I can accept that the basic salary of a something is

about £80,000 - not too bad for a casino player at about 3 times the average wage in the UK, and if their employers make a real profit i.e. after deducting all the bad debts and creating sufficient provisions for future losses then the employees could be paid bonuses of up to say 20% of their basic salary.
 
Once again the man in the street will wonder why these allegedly super somethings are worth paying more than I have suggested. Why is a guy who wins a bet more important to our economy than a Junior Doctor or Manager at an engineering plant generating real

exports for this economy? Indeed could we please dismantle the Banking system so that we can see the casino separately from the local Bank Manager who will be pleased to receive your deposit or to lend your factory £50,000 to provider capital for a new product. We

understood banking when it was like that, and if you wanted finance for acquisitions and stuff like that then you went to the Merchant Banks who would put their money behind you or otherwise organise the financing in ways where failure did NOT get back to my local Bank Manager, and the idea of tax payers bailing them out had not occurred to anyone.