When I heard that the City bonuses are going to amount to £7 billion this morning, I sincerely wished that someone somewhere would start a revolution

[nameymcnamechange]

Coming as it does after yesterday's Child Benefit announcement, I am beginning to feel positively anarchic.

I think there should be a General Strike over this, or at least a protest march in London.

Siasi

There is a difference in investing in funds when you understand Black Swan events and having a vested interest in Black Swan events. He is an adviser to Universa but not a trader.

Also, the point about JP Morgan is that despite them perhaps not suffering the losses that others did, they surely do operate with very risky and phoney products. And since the whole thing is inter reliant, they cannot simply say they are neutral in causing the banking crisis.

What is the difference between the postal workers going on strike to save their jobs and the bankers that threaten to leave the UK if they are regulated and don't receive their massive bonuses?

Some really good points here. It was the banks screwing up that got us into this mess - yet they are back to their old ways, while the rest of us pick up the bill. Several times over - the cost of the bail out, again in paying more taxes/having benefits cut/public services cut.

We need to move away from an economy dependent on financial services - a dependency created by that industry in its own self-interest and helped along by slavish politicians who believed all the lies they were fed and clearly weren't listening in history lessons at school. Other EU nations manage to retain manufacturing industry as a significant part of their economies we should do the same.

And we need to control the banks. They owe us - all us ordinary Joes paying for their mistakes. Even the ones that weren't directly bailed out only survived because of the bail out and the injection of cash into the system. They have NO right to pay vast bonuses out of taxpayers' money.

Everyone else is being squeezed as a result of their failures. Yet there have been no reforms, no attempts to change the culture. We need reform, we need to cut the City down to size and we need to call their bluff. Financial service is a function, not a God. We need it to serve the economy, not to BE the economy.

Orm - the bankers never do it. The posties are prepared to stand up for their rights. The bankers just issue empty threats about how special they are (fundamental attribution error as someone said) and expect everyone else to bow down before them.

And of course the posties are paid less than 1/100th of what the bankers get. And the posties deliver an essential public service. While the bankers are destroying essential public services.

"Tough, but fair"

Posties are useless pieces of shit who can easily be replaced? There is an illusion that there is a talent in being a banker

A famous longitudinal study by Tetlock showed that non-experts do as well or better than 'experts'

It is all the Emperors New Clothes

We could get rid of Adam Crozier - he's the most highly paid public sector worker, several times what Cameron gets, and is doing a crap job.

"Badgers is a perfect example of someone who has fallen for all the tricks"

The sector will move away, it's not fixed to any static location in the same way that any other industry is.

It's that same flexibility that enabled us to lure them here to such an extent that they provided that huge chunk of our GDP.

They came here quite quickly, they could just as easily go somewhere else quite quickly.

In many ways I think we agree LadyBlaBlah. I don't think that we should be dependant on banking what-so-ever and I think that at it's heart banking is dependant on so many contradictions that it's all just doomed to fail. Making money off of making money just isn't sustainable.

However where we diverge is what we do about it.

I'm not in favour of letting the Government be allowed to interfere in business by allowing it to either shred employment contracts, tear up financial deals or to place arbitrary caps on how a private business spends it's money.

What I do want to see happening is some diversification so that when the bankers mess up again we are able to say to them, "sorry, we don't need you, you failed, you can go to the wall like anyone else".

I'm not sure if the current Government has any interest in getting us to that position though...

Retain Manufacturing and Industry?

I know, lets scrap the Sheffield Forgemasters loan. That will really get enterprise going

Like when we decide to build some nuclear power stations (inevitable) let's not do it in our own country, lets get some other country (that has made the investment in their industry) to do it.

I might send through a Powerpoint to Dave and George on joined up thinking

LadyBlahBlah

Recently he hgas become an adviser but he was a trader before.

Taleb is a brilliant at self-promotion. But many professionals consider his books naive at best. My DH has a professional background in probability theory and finds "Fooled by Randomness" to have more mathematical holes in it that a sieve.

The banking crisis was caused by the basic problem that people want to live outside their means, buying unaffordable houses, racking up huge credit card debt etc etc. Some irreponsible banks provided the means to do that, many governments such as Labour encouraged it through lax regulation. But people need to be responsible for the choice they make and stop blaming others.

Your husband and the 'professionals' you quote are exactly the type of person he is criticising

I am not surprised by their defensiveness

AS Taleb says, the very fact that these 'professionals' think they can predict anything is laughable. And Probability Theory is pure shite.

I have studied stats to a decent level. And even I know it is total shite.

I quite agree edam. But when some people say we have to be careful in case the big earners bugger orf, but throw phrases like 'holding he country to ransom' when any less bod threatens to withdraw their labour

BTW - your Taleb is brilliant at self promotion argument is a little flawed........he very rarely appears in the media. Indeed he is on a media black out at the moment

His website is the worst I have ever seen

LadyBlahBlah

So my DH's understanding of quantum field theory is total shite. I hope you intend to stop using the computer that relies on that exact understanding of quantum electrodynamics that allows people to fabricate silicon technology and i assume you don't want any NMR scans at hospital if you get ill.

Speaking as the wife of a banker (ducks and runs for cover) from our perspective there has been a reduction in the amount of bonus since the crash. Yes I know your heart is bleeding...

There is also the fact of 50% tax. He does around 60 - 70 hour weeks normally and once a month or so 14 - 15 hour days. We give to charity as you would expect. We would be in favour of another tax on banking profits because of the crisis (there was a one off tax last year) and also in favour of the Robin Hood tax.

Bankers are involved in making profits often working in high stress high skill jobs but don't set the tax system, government does. So march on government and lobby government as well if you want change. It's those in power who have the ability to change things.

Yes we have become overly dependent upon the financial sector...but as I once saw posted here on MN, when you're in the desert you don't shoot your horse, no matter how much you hate the bastard.

And like it or lump it, the banking sector is highly moveable. After all, it moved here, and it can move somewhere else.
Until such point as we have been paid back what we are owed, and we have replaced the industry with something else, I don't think we have a lot of options.

Another point which I don't fully grasp is how or why governemnt should have anyhting to say on how much a private coompany pays its employees/partners/suppliers?

Isn't that entirely a matter for the company?

Thats the point Siasi, your very clever husband can use his theory in tangible ways to make things and make solid things work.

But when they get involved in predicting things in economics is when it all goes very wrong - there are, as Taleb, points out, Black Swans, and mathematics does not currently account for this, especially in the banking sector when the motivation for bonus is there. As we have seen? Surely you are not going to deny that all the mathematicians totally fucked up ?

I also agree with edam.

I would also say to littletinkers, that I also regularly work 60 hour weeks and have been known on some occassions to work right through the night to meet deadlines within my job. However, despite this, I received only a 3.5% pay increase in the last year. I am lucky, some public sector workers received nothing.

Bankers may be involved in making profits, but it is funny that they don't seem to feel the fall-out as a consequence of making severe losses. I wouldn't mind about high bonuses for profits, if the reverse were also true and they were penalised for making huge loses. Instead, they walk off and public sector workers feel the brunt.

The revenue helps the economy but also prices reasonable salary earners out, making them relatively poorer. So when my banking friends threatened to leave if labour got in my other friends said .

Lots of people will take feeling better off than worrying about lost bankers' revenue. Might be counterproductive but many feel it is obscene and don't care.

Banks do sponsor my industry and I benefit personally but house prices are high in London- overall I am neutral.

We will all feel very sick, though, if we don't get the money back that was used in the bail out.

Sometimes one has to put aside feelings and protect ones investments.

I'd like to know why the last government, when handing over the fat cheques, didn't make the bankers sign on the dotted line conditional agreements about salary, bonuses, lending practices etc.

Agree with edam.

Also find it mildly amusing that bankers always use their terribly long hours as justification for their obscene pay packets. I know many people who work those sorts of hours for a lot less money.

Well quite Chil.

saintly - long hours are almost a red herring - though I accept the hours of most city workers are horrendous.

If someone makes a lot of money for their employer, or themselves, then who are the government to say they shouldn't have it?

Going back to what was said at the beginning on the thread : that bonuses are paid "Just showing up at the office every day and doing what they are already paid handsomely for."

But isn't that the case for many other people, for example footballers? They are being paid to win matches. They win, they get a (huge) bonus. Yet no one moans about them.

As for not caring if the banks leave the UK...if the banks go, how will you continue to get paid, pay for your shopping, etc.?

I live in a country where you have to pay to have a bank account, a chequebook, a debit or credit card, to transfer money and the interests rates are lower than in the UK...

If the banks no longer have their investment side in the UK, how do you think they will pay for their ordinary retail banking? They will charge the customer.