Most of us live in a twilight world which is only rarely illuminated by the floodlights from above. We get along day-to-day, working for 8 or 9 hours, shopping at Tesco or Asda, watching a bit of TV and sleeping for 7 hours every night. Occasionally, we indulge ourselves in a meal in a comfortable restaurant that employs a good chef or we go to a sporting fixture or a theatre. We have hobbies and interests and we read books and enjoy music. Some of us marry and have families. Some have families but don't marry. We manage this on average pay of £25,000 per annum and after about 75 years it is called A Life.
In recent times we have been hearing more and more about another section of the human race that occasionally provides illumination onto our twilight world and does much the same as we do but with lots more money. Footballers in the English Premier League earn some fabulous wages paid for by foreign billionaires or by virtual money spirited into existence by some exceedingly talented creative accountants. If the creative accounting falls to pieces of the foreign billionaires depart then the clubs will fail and the inflated wages will end.
In the world of high finance different rules apply. Banks operate by using our money to finance dodgy investments that can go belly up - in which case, we, who lent them the money in the first place but were not consulted about the dodgy investments, will bail them out with more money - because the banks are too big to fail and if they did they would take all of our money with them. To operate in one of these wondrous institutions requires great expertise denied to the rest of us and hence the masters of this high finance feel the need to be properly rewarded for their expertise by being paid vast sums in salaries and bonuses. In fact, the expertise is of such high calibre that we insist that they be paid huge bonuses even as we bail them out.
This time of the year is Bonus Time. Stories are coming out telling us of magnitude of this year's bank bonuses and it seems that as they survive with our money they have taken the opportunity to boost the bonuses - very necessary - what with all the worry about their companies getting flushed down the drain and so on. One of the American banks, Goldman Sachs, has £10 billion in this year's bonus box and this will help to provide overall pay and bonus packages for all their employees at an average of $500,000 each. Some of you may have spotted - even if you are not quite up-to-date about the £:$ conversion rate - that this pay package is rather more than the £25,000 that the rest of us have to manage with. Goldman Sachs - or Money Bags, as they are known - have a few thousand people working for them in the UK and the one hundred partners over here will cap their pay and bonuses this year at a mere £1 million. Apparently, according to an official spokesperson, they wanted to be seen to be exercising the restraint which Alistair Darling had demanded of all bankers. It seems that this means that they will have given up "several hundreds of millions of pounds." What will happen to this money? I assume it will be quietly stored away - one way or another - for payment when the heat is off. Below the level of partners, there will still be many employees being paid more than £1 million.
So the obscenity continues. Now, it seems that more and more people are succumbing to the belief that the massive pay outs cannot be stopped. Mr Obama has indicated that he intends to stop it and his leadership will be crucial. But the bankers will fight like hell - and they have the power and the money - our money - to scupper any plans for cutting their pay to levels comparable to other proper jobs - bearing in mind that much of this money making business by the banks is regarded as "socially useless."
Recently the state owned Royal Bank of Scotland provided the finance to help an American company, Kraft, to takeover a much loved British institution, Cadburys, in spite of the fact the most people are opposed to it and that it will lead to many job losses in the UK. The take over is unlikely to be stopped because many of the shareholders at this moment are hedge funds interested only in making a quick few million bucks by selling at a profit shares they bought in the last few months. Royal Bank of Scotland is quite entitled to help sell off our industries because, says Gordon Brown, "it is only a bank" The sale of Cadburys will net huge profits to lawyers, bankers and hedge fund managers none of whom care a monkey's about Cadburys.
If we had governments with talent things could change but we are a long way from such a situation as of now. Is there any hope?
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