No worries, hope you had a nice Christmas anyway.
I may have taken banker bashing a bit personnally, but it's hard not too when you keep having to take one in the ass for the team! Like 90% bonus cuts, when I don't even work in Credit!
Interesting news today though, JP Morgan are scrapping plans to build a £2.4bn office in Canary Wharf (which is given straight back to the struggling construction industry), and HSBC are likelyto move their headquarters from London in response to the Govt' actions. Not bad considering the tax will only raise £500m anyway.
Glen, one thing I have witnessed when researching an answer [and I still haven't finalised one yet] is a pattern.
Patterns are important from mathematics to art, and from astrophysics to economics ... why? ....because they reveal indirect properties of what's being looked at.
And the pattern I am seeing the more I look is, the people who defend the bankers tend to be the bankers themselves whereas the people who tend to blame the bankers is everybody else [of those involved in the debate].
Either ..the underlying truth being inferred is a systematic bias against bankers or the bankers were at fault .... or ..... a combination of the two.
Ya pays ya money, ya takes ya choice as to what you believe after the pattern has been revealed.
As for me, I hate greedy bankers; as to how many you can attribute that descriptive to?
I'd hazard a guess at the vast majority but that guess has nothing to do with my knowledge of bankers but has everything to do with my knowledge of people and what they act like when unbounded by laws or protocols when there's money around.
I blame the bankers yes, and I still do, even more-so after I have researched this a little [a few hours worth not that extensive] and I don't blame them because they are bankers, I blame them because they are people who have ended up having the opportunity to realise their greed as bankers.
I'm afraid most of us would do the same thing in similar positions if we were all honest but the difference is, most of us aren't and the bankers did.
My opinion thus far [for what it's worth] is the bankers were to blame [but not entirely] because nobody made them nudge the envelope of greed, they made their own decisions wilfully but I will also add, there were little to no effective banking conventions [and respective national laws] that restricted their greed.
I am certailny not digging you out Glenn because I know you ain't one of those we are talking about coz if you were mate, you wouldn't be living round the corner from me