Those damned bankers really are incorrigible, aren’t they? No sooner does President Obama adjust his state-of-the-economy soundbite from last month’s cautious “glimmers of stabilisation” to this week’s slightly more upbeat “glimmers of hope”, and our friends in the City and Wall Street are off to the races again, looking for every possible way to maximise their pay packets.
Or at least that’s the way it looks from the headlines about Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank that took $10 billion of US taxpayers’ money in former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s bail-out last autumn, but is now trying to repay it as fast as possible in order to get the government off its back. In doing so, it would free itself of politically imposed restraints on pay levels, and on hiring non-American staff. The bank has already increased its bonus pool for the first quarter of this year, and is promising fat pay rises to come.
How about a double standard? Bonuses are BAD if they go to execs of private firms like AIG but GOOD if they go to execs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Not a peep from the media about the latter, but a witch-hunt against the former.