Should bankers repay bonuses?

carolt

On the contrary - if you spend 5 minutes on here, it's clear there are far, far too many. :eek:

itsnever2lateisit?

thriftybabe wrote: »

The working man at the present time is funding the bankers. They should not get any bonuses when there are some people fighting for survival in the present climate. Disgusted that they should have got anything at all. They should definitely pay it back.

As I said in another thread the customer should withdraw their savings in protest. And the largest shareholder should call an extraordinary AGM in two cases

chewmylegoff

this is a pointless debate, as it is never going to happen.

Oblivion

mewbie wrote: »

There's never really a good hate figure when you need one is there.

Gormless Gordon totally fills the bill for me. Problem now, in the recession he has created, is finding an adequate supply of pins to stick in his effigy.

Dave.

tesuhoha

mewbie wrote: »

Although bankers are the new hate figures I am not too sure they are at fault for the crisis. After all a few months ago it was short sellers who were the new scum of the earth. The origin of our current crisis was the opening up of mortgages to people who perhaps should never have had mortgages. I don't think it was each and every banker in the world who made that decision, I believe it was more of a political decision. And perhaps even then the essence of it is people borrowing money they couldn't afford to pay back, or people lending them money they couldn't afford to pay back. So quite a range to put the blame on.

There's never really a good hate figure when you need one is there.

From my experience on these boards the hate figures are in no particular order, plumbers, current house owners (especially those being repossessed, buy to letters, teachers, Gordon Brown, and Phil and Kirsty. There are probably more that I havent thought of.

chucky

chewmylegoff wrote: »

this is a pointless debate, as it is never going to happen.

are you talking about this thread or every other thread on this board?

zarazara

In answer to OP original question, YES.

bob_a_builder

nabbed directly off the 'peston' blog for greater exposure

This one is a petition to stop the banks we are supporting paying bonuses. http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Antidote/

The other is to windfall tax the bonuses http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Taxbankers/

Andy_L

purch wrote: »

My wife would be really offended by that :eek: .....but as she's walking about in the deep snow in the garden in 5" stilleto's and a mini skirt, she won't be able to read it

Oi, pictures!

SGE1

I think it's a really tough one.

Looking at it from a straightforward 'moral' perspective, bankers clearly shouldn't be earning bonuses at the moment. Simply put, they don't deserve it. Even those that are relatively junior, and were never involved in the decisions that led to the crash of the sub-prime market, should accept that their industry isn't in a position to reward them, even if they've done a decent job individually.

The problem is, if there's a major crackdown on bonuses, will those bankers we need ship off elsewhere, to banks that aren't relying on taxpayer funding? As if they do, will that mean that RBS, Lloyds etc won't have the necessary talent pool to fix the mess? And will investors lose confidence in these banks? If the answer to these questions is yes, then RBS and Lloyds' shares will have a hard time re-gaining value - and this matters to us because at the end of the day, when the Government sells off its assets, we'll make a loss rather than a profit. So technically, though we'll all they the satisfaction of knowing that employees in the banking sector had their bonuses nicked from under their nose, the taxpayer may actually be worse off. It's technically in our interest to make sure Government-supported banks do as well as possible, so that we recoup the losses and even make a profit when the shares are sold back into the private sector.

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether employees who feel slighted by withdrawn bonuses will actually move elsewhere. Given that people are generally keen to keep their jobs, and given very few alternative jobs going, particularly in the banking sector, even if staff wanted to leave RBS/Lloyds, would they be able to/find another job to go to?