It's Good to be the King

Weird that this surprises anybody.

In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff.

Speaking to an audience at St Paul’s Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all” [...]

With public anger mounting at the forecast of bumper bonuses for bankers only a year after the industry was rescued by the taxpayer, he said bankers’ bonuses should be seen as part of a longer-term investment in Britain’s economy. “I believe that we should be thinking about the medium-term common good, not the short-term common good … We should not, therefore, be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market which ensures the bank businesses here and employs British people,” he said.

Griffiths said that many banks would relocate abroad if the government cracked down on bonus culture. “If we said we’re not going to have as big bonuses or the same bonuses as last year, I think then you’d find that lots of City firms could easily hive off their operations to Switzerland or the far east,” he said.

Banks do not offer anything of value to anyone but themselves. What they do is take advantage of people's inability to buy homes and cars with cash, and for the very financially desperate, credit card debt. The only way they can make massive profits in that business is to make sure that the vast majority of citizens in a country are not wealthy enough to pay cash for everything.

For that, they demand that they pay themselves massive amounts of money, or they're going to move out of the country. Yes, that's a threat.

I do use a credit card that I pay off monthly. I think the annual fee is something like 20 bucks. I'm not positive about that, but there is a certain amount of money that I'm willing to pay in order to have the convenience of not having to carry wads of cash around with me. I'd rather the federal government be in that business and not the banks. The fed prints currency, and my credit card is just another type of currency. There is no inherent value in the credit card business, it's just a substitute for cash and yet banks are making a killing off it.

As I always say.. you can't have rich people unless most everyone else is not rich. You just don't see many rich people say it so explicitly as that jackass does. They very wealthy have no qualms about making sure the vast majority of national wealth is reserved for a relative few in order to further that paradigm. Let's not kid ourselves about it.

I think capitalism and innovation is a great thing. Humanity makes progress in large part by the work of people who want to get rich. That's fine. However, the increasing wealth gap is getting a bit ridiculous. And the idea that there is some "morality in the marketplace" is absurd.