Any change to bonuses needs to be industry wide, otherwise you’re just pushing the people who can command good bonuses out of RBS and into other financial companies. As the government wants RBS to be profitable, this would be a really dumb thing for them to do.

Instead, legislation needs to focus on making bonuses less worthwhile for all banks to pay.

what proportion of that bonus pool is going to staff like bank tellers and clerks, getting a few thousand each?

So because BB and a few others don’t agree with something it’s right to break the law is it?

Jonathan Friedland has an alternative, appealing, idea; change to the co-op bank.

On the other hand i’ll support him if he promises not to sing anymore.

Isn’t a bonus an extra reward for exceptional performance?

Because it looks like that it doesn’t matter how badly this shower fucked up over the past 18 months, there doesn’t seem to any banker at a ‘major’ firm (even ones who went technically bankrupt and were saved, like RBS) who wasn’t in line for a ‘bonus’ regardless of the rather large negative externalities their activities cause.

I’d be interested if anybody has heard of a bank that was contractually obliged not to dish out ‘bonuses’ ie – there was an actual bonus framework in place that rewarded good performance, ergo their employees were in line for nothing.

what proportion of that bonus pool is going to staff like bank tellers and clerks, getting a few thousand each?

Steady on Vladimir.

what proportion of that bonus pool is going to staff like bank tellers and clerks, getting a few thousand each?

Miniscule?

So because BB and a few others don’t agree with something it’s right to break the law is it?

Funny, people don’t seem to make this argument against those who refuse to pay BBC license fee

well I don’t know either Sunny …. RBS employs many thousands of lower level staff, so you only need to give them a few grand each and it adds up. Anyway, it doesn’t make much difference … one just has to adjust “no bonuses at RBS” to “no bonuses above £5000″ to cater for this.

on the subject of banks here is an interview with somebody who really knows his onions (his 2005 “jackson hole” speech warning of trouble ahead is legendary).

What is it that is so hard to grasp about the idea that you SHOULDN’T GET A MOTHERF**KING BONUS IF YOU FAILED AT YOUR JOB, ESP. IF THAT BONUS IS FROM A DEBT YOU HAVEN’T PAID OFF YET!

And relax…

@5

Funny, people don’t seem to make this argument against those who refuse to pay BBC license fee

I don’t think everyone agreed that not paying the license fee was correct did they?

So you’re saying we’re all free to choose which laws we obey and which we don’t are you?

Can I withhold my tax because there are other things I don’t agree with?

This is student politics, but then we are talking Billy Bragg.

Let it be said loud and clear that the campaign is not about any money that would benefit ordinary bank clerks.

Also. For Luis Enrique, a special present for you. Take a peek at this genius link which I think may strike a chord with someone.

http://enemiesofreason.blogspot.com/2009/03/im-right-wing.html

Completely agree with Andrew Ducker.

Given the industry-wide culture of ridiculously big (and undeserved) bonuses it is operating in, the bonuses at RBS clearly represent taxpayer value (otherwise all the good staff will be poached and performance will not be as good).

The answer lies in curtailing undeserved bonuses in the banking industry as a whole. To just unilaterally impose hard times at RBS is just shooting ourselves in the foot.

Ah yes Claude … I see the campaign proposes a £25,000 cap, more generous than the £5000 I suggested above. I’d still be interested to know what proportion of the headline billions of bonuses figure falls in that category.

as for your link … very clever, most enjoyable. Shall I presume you think it applies directly to me? Curiously, right-wing half-wits at, say, Tim Worstall’s blog think I’m a socialist … I shan’t make any comparison with left-wingers here who continually take me for a right winger, who I’m sure aren’t half-wits at all.

To just unilaterally impose hard times at RBS is just shooting ourselves in the foot.

Not necessarily. That assumes that the profit drivers at RBS are the big speculators who nearly killed the company in the first place.

It depends on where the profit is being made. If we have RBS once again dependent on these speculators to drive profits and cash, then we’ll eventually have to come back to prop up RBS again. If, on the other hand, the company actually wants to change the way it does business (as it should) then going back to the way things were clearly won’t help/.

So the UK economy is stuffed, tax revenue is heavily reliant upon profits from the financial sector, our manufacturing base has been erroded by lack of investment and outsourcing – yet some people persist in deluding themselves that the banking industry is not our lifeline back to recovery.

You don’t have to be a social scientist to kow that cultures evolve rather than change direction overnight and the profit motive behind the bonus culture in banking is as strong as any.

We laugh at politicians who pretend that they can tackle overnight the culture of welfare dependency or victimhood without unforseen consequences yet we entertain the prospect of trying to taming the greed of bankers.

Good grief, we might as well ask them to pull the ladder up after them when they climb out of our hole.

I don’t agree with some government spending. Therefore I will not pay money to the government until they stop spending this money.

Has Billy Bragg switched to extreme Libertarian views then? I thought he was still a Socialist.

I think this is just silly gesture politics. Billy Bragg is wrong when he says that the government gave RBS a loan. They took an equity stake of 70% of ordinary shares to recapitalise the bank. They have another 14% of economic interest in non-voting B shares. The government could sell their stake at any time. However, ‘ RBS can’t repay the taxpayer ‘.

RBS have a huge workforce overseas and many of them will be included in this aggregated bonus pool. Should British taxpayers have a right to dictate how much non-British citizens earn? A lot of the biggest bonuses will be going to RBS Sempra Commodities (based in the US) as they have had a highly profitable year. RBS own a 51% stake of Sempra. Why should Sempra traders suffer because the RBS parent bought a bunch of toxic positions when they took over ABN Amro?

The more we try to punish RBS the more it will harm our collective equity stake. By all means campaign against excessive bonuses based on short-term excessive risk. However, singling out individual institutions is utterly pointless. As others have stated the way to go is negotiating joint rules between the EU/UK/US that apply to all as this prevents regulatory arbitrage. Moreover, the single biggest thing to prevent excessive bonuses is for the BoE to lean against the economic cycle. If the central bank forces the banks to hold more capital in a countercyclical manner bonuses would automatically fall. Billy Bragg would be better turning his attention to the Bank of England in my opinion.

Sunny

That assumes that the profit drivers at RBS are the big speculators who nearly killed the company in the first place.

Well, no. The bonuses in discussion are those due to staff at the investment bank wing of RBS.

And are measured purely as a small percentage of the profits the bank made during that fiscal year.

The rest of that massive profit does, of course, get shared amongst shareholders. ie, us taxpayers.

I’ve had jobs with performance related pay before. If some populist arsehole told me after I’d worked damn hard to turn my company around that I wasn’t allowed the bonus as per my terms of employment because a bunch of populist journalists want to distort the truth about it, I’d be thinking of jumping ship too.

The RBS investment bank is a major profit centre within the group. That’s why the staff there are due bonuses.

We own a big stake of that bank, and we need the money we payed for that stake back. To get it back, the decent competent staff that are there making us money need to be encouraged to stay, and not jump ship to, say, Barclays, who are actively trying to headhunt them.

In addition, the board at RBS had no legal choice but to assert their intention to resign, they have a duty to all shareholders, many of whom share their view.

Amasing how much I’ve managed to learn about corporate law and finance since this crisis started. Most of this specific story isn’t even that complex.

The staff are due the bonus as a %age of the profits they earnt us during the fiscal year. Statement of fact.

If they’re denied it, a lot of them can, and will, jump ship to other city institutions. The RBS investment wing will then cease to be a succesful investment bank, and our 84% stake becomes signifcantly less valuable.

If you want to lose the taxpayer money, go ahead, deny them the bonus.

13- I know how to tame the greed of banker scum. By not giving them a fucking penny of taxpayers’ money.

I would not have bailed them out, I’d have told them to fuck off and die. But now they are owned by the state we should take the chance we missed when we nationalised industry, and mutualise them.

I actually believe in things like consumer choice that right-wing filth lyingly claim to believe. So I think people should be able to choose between building societies and banks, when the mutuals will perform much better due to the casino cunts no longer having the government to bail them out.

The right really are fucking shameless, seriously. Do you seriously not see that bailing out banks then allowing themselves to reward themselves for failure is wrong? Do you not appreciate that financial “services” are not the route to wealth?

I will continue to slag off banker scum. I will continue to point out to my mates that they get a better deal at the Co-Op. Every day I am confirmed that my initial opinions were right.

Oh joy makes me feel 30 years younger. Back at University with gesture politics.

Ok so you have £850bn to invest do you:

Invest it with a business that is able to recruit the best people and motivate them in the hope that your £850bn will come back to you as £1100bn allowing a wonderland of tax cuts, new schools and a healthcare system that works or:

Invest it with someone who is unable to recruit, whose staff are busy networking other employers and as a result you end up selling your investment to some nice foreigner for £450bn and asking the IMF for help.

mmm lets go down with a gesture

I find it funny those that expound the idea that the fiscal sector is the only thing to pull us out of the hole that they got us into and even if that ‘getting out of the hole’ is done with public funds, it’s alright.

Idiots.

http://tinyurl.com/y8qtbf4