Isn’t part of the problem that the government has only bailed out some banks, but wants to tax all bankers?

Barclays, for instance, raised capital privately. Our government bailed out Northern Rock, Lloyds (having forced them to merge with a fragile HBOS) and RBS (if I’ve missed any let me know) but are looking to tax employees of Santander, HSBC, Barclays etc who they did not bail out. I think that’s where the issue is.

But then these are issues that should have been sorted when the problem of bailing out the banks was happening. Government money should have only been available with certain clauses, for instance the foregoing of bonuses until the taxpayer had been paid back. Instead we’ve hosed money at these banks and only now are starting to think ‘hold on, those bankers got a pretty sweet deal thanks to us – maybe we should get some money back’.

The government really bailed out the whole banking sector, whether an individual bank got money or not. It seems that most big banks took a blind eye to what they were doing, and all contributed to the banking sectors destruction. With the government bailing out some banks, Barclays Bank was also saved because of the bail out.

.

You supported the bailout, didn’t you?!

You’re completely right about the coverage of course…

Sunny,

I wholeheartedly agree. Another contrast between here and the US is that in the US a body of influential economic and financial bloggers, academics and journalists have kept up the pressure on the goverment and bankers, and have been poring over proposed legislation, exposing how banks are trying to wangle things in their favour and generally providing a fantastic public service. UK economists and bloggers have not acquitted themselves nearly so well – where is the detailed coverage of UK financial reform / legislation?

One of the finest is Rortybomb, and his coverage of the forthcoming Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will be worth reading. The post I’ve linked to there is a fine example, and also contains links to other luminaries like Simon Johnson. Felix Salmon is prob the best UK equiv, but I think he’s US based. Here he is defending a Huff Post campaign to get people to leave the big banks.

@2 Steven

Maybe so, but you can only really justify punitive penalties on the bailed out banks. We’ll never really know how Barclays would have done had the government not bailed out the banks it did – what we do know is that Barclays didn’t directly require a penny of taxpayers cash to keep going and their current debt to the taxpayer is zero. If they don’t actually owe us any money, who are we to tell them they can’t pay large bonuses this year?