I wouldn't bank on it

[amateur51]

What particular compensation structure are you referring to? Bank customer compensation? Important as that is in itself, it's hardly likely to figure in the far larger world of shady interest fixing by investment arms of major international banks, is it?

I was using , I hope accurately, the strange language used by Diamond and his ilk for what most salaried people call 'a pay structure'. They call it 'compensation', presumably to create that the illusion that their time and expertise is beyond price and all they're seeking is just some small recognition of how much effort they put into their work

I do know that Elliott Carter doesn't any more, though, but then he is nearly 104 and needs to conserve his energies for his work.

At 104 I imagine Mr Carter is fully exercised in getting dressed and keeping the front of his trousers dry & tidy

I know I am

[Lateralthinking1]

What - me personally? No, seriously, who will train the trainers? (as I already asked), how would the Department for Education suddenly acquire all the requisite know-how and trained and experienced staff to implement such training? and, even if this were possible, how would or could it guarantee no possible return to the current situation? You can in any case teach anyone to do whatever you lkike but that doesn't guarantee that those things will get done as taught, especially when greed, self-interest and a mania for corrupt practice take over.

Oh, every young generation sees those above 30 as stuck in their ways, wrong, and easily placed in their boxes by doing exactly the reverse. We could focus on the window smashers but all know that it is the Oxbridge graduates who will tear up the book. The current system doesn't stand a chance beyond the fading egos. In banking it will be the 1950s far sooner than you know.

[ahinton]

I was using , I hope accurately, the strange language used by Diamond and his ilk for what most salaried people call 'a pay structure'. They call it 'compensation', presumably to create that the illusion that their time and expertise is beyond price and all they're seeking is just some small recognition of how much effort they put into their work

Ah, I understand now; thanks for that.

At 104 I imagine Mr Carter is fully exercised in getting dressed and keeping the front of his trousers dry & tidy

I know I am

But you're not 103, are you?! - and, in any case, Mr Carter is not "fully" exercised therewith, as he's still actively composing (at an age when, it's been said rather too often, most people are passively decomposing).

[ahinton]

Oh, every young generation sees those above 30 as stuck in their ways, wrong, and easily placed in their boxes by doing exactly the reverse. We could focus on the window smashers but all know that it is the Oxbridge graduates who will tear up the book. The current system doesn't stand a chance beyond the fading egos. In banking it will be the 1950s far sooner than you know.

Not if the banks are almost totally trashed both by the outcome and the subsequent overbearingly heavy regulation of their more suspect international activities, it won't! This isn't about generational viewpoint differences, anyway.

[Lateralthinking1]

Not if the banks are almost totally trashed both by the outcome and the subsequent overbearingly heavy regulation of their more suspect international activities, it won't! This isn't about generational viewpoint differences, anyway.

I beg to differ ahinton. I think it is precisely a bankers' middle aged crisis. We do not need to feed egos by seeing it as more. The entire jittery dialogue is on the axis 'you will never be able to survive without me'. Remove it and the problem is quickly solved.

The only thing that is likely to impede 'a new age' is the clever and disingenuous structuring of society which sees youngsters now in very high positions. What that is doing is fixing them in to the systems of 40 to 70 somethings rather than enabling them to develop naturally. They have responsibility when they could be having constructive radical thought.

[JohnSkelton]

the employment of a brace of extra civil servants and that the poor taxpayer would then get stung twice by reason of having to fund that exercise.

It being a well-known fact that civil servants don't pay tax.

Though it comes from the Communist New Statesman, this http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/bu...12/06/qa-libor is a useful explanation of Libor and what Barclays did.

This loss was distributed over the whole economy, and ultimately taken by the tax payer.

Serves people right for paying tax, of course, when morally they should follow Sir Philip Green's (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/elec...lip-Green.html) example http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/3.

[amateur51]

It being a well-known fact that civil servants don't pay tax.

Though it comes from the Communist New Statesman, this http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/bu...12/06/qa-libor is a useful explanation of Libor and what Barclays did.

This loss was distributed over the whole economy, and ultimately taken by the tax payer.

Serves people right for paying tax, of course, when morally they should follow Sir Philip Green's (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/elec...lip-Green.html) example http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/3.

From the second link:

"In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax."

I like that use of 'dodge' - doesn't say it's legal/illegal, just says it's 'wide' and certainly and clearly immoral particularly at a time when his Boys Who Get It are telling us - all together now - We're All In This Together!

Goebbels got it right - if you're going to tell a lie, tell a BIG ONE

- and tell it often enough and it will become the Truth.

PLEASE can we have the back, french frank, pretty please?

[ahinton]

I beg to differ ahinton. I think it is precisely a bankers' middle aged crisis. We do not need to feed egos by seeing it as more. The entire jittery dialogue is on the axis 'you will never be able to survive without me'. Remove it and the problem is quickly solved.

Why and on what specific grounds and with what evidence have you concluded that it is indeed a kind of generational issue? Do you really not think that the kinds of greed evidenced by derivatives traders and others in their 20s and actual bankers of all ages (albeit perhaps more by those of middle age by virtue of the seniority of their positions within those banks) are equally responsible for this kind of thing? Whilst I do not doubt your second sentence, I would add that (a) many of the presumed-guilty bankers did not even expect to be found out and (b) the fact that the rest of the world would have immense difficult in surviving were the banks were regulated out of business is indeed ust that - a fact and an inescapable one at that.

The only thing that is likely to impede 'a new age' is the clever and disingenuous structuring of society which sees youngsters now in very high positions. What that is doing is fixing them in to the systems of 40 to 70 somethings rather than enabling them to develop naturally. They have responsibility when they could be having constructive radical thought.

So now you're blaming the elevation of young people into positions that you believe should more appropriately be occupied by older ones as one aspect of this problem! This seems all the more to demonstrate that, in terms of practical reality, the existence of the problem itself is - as logic itself would apear to endorse - no respecter of any age boundaries. In any event, someone at all times has to have that responsibility of which you write and, if it is to be abused internationally on a vast scale by whomsoever may have it at any given time, it might arguably not matter too much whether or not the younger ones have constructive radical thought, especially were insufficient power, let alone responsiblity, vested in them to turn any such thought into practice.

[ahinton]

It being a well-known fact that civil servants don't pay tax.

Is it? Well, forgive my ignorance, for I didn't know that myself! That said, however, not only did I neither state nor imply that they didn't pa tax, it would also not in any case have affected my point even if I had, because I was talking about the fact that taxpayers' money would have to fund any additional civil servants required to undertake the work concerned, not about how much tax they might pay on the salaries that they would receive for doing it!

[QUOTE=JohnSkelton;178273]Though it comes from the Communist New Statesman, this http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/bu...12/06/qa-libor is a useful explanation of Libor and what Barclays did.

This loss was distributed over the whole economy, and ultimately taken by the tax payer.
Indeed so, as I myself implied when I wrote of that poor long-suffering taxpayer having to be stung twice if more civil servants had to be employed i order to issue all those P45s to the parties deemed gulty of the misdeeds under discussion! HOwever, I have to confess that my ignorance is even greater than I'd at first thought, as I'd no idea that just about the only stonking review I've ever had was published in a Communist journal!

Serves people right for paying tax, of course, when morally they should follow Sir Philip Green's (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/elec...lip-Green.html) example http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/3.

Interesting point, at least to the extent that it would presumably have then to be argued that, had all taxpayers indeed followed that particular example and managed to pay little or no tax, they'd be in a rather weaker position to complain that they'd lost out over the banks' misdemeounours by virtue of being taxpayers, n'est-ce pas?(!)...

[amateur51]

Why and on what specific grounds and with what evidence have you concluded that it is indeed a kind of generational issue? Do you really not think that the kinds of greed evidenced by derivatives traders and others in their 20s and actual bankers of all ages (albeit perhaps more by those of middle age by virtue of the seniority of their positions within those banks) are equally responsible for this kind of thing? Whilst I do not doubt your second sentence, I would add that (a) many of the presumed-guilty bankers did not even expect to be found out and (b) the fact that the rest of the world would have immense difficult in surviving were the banks were regulated out of business is indeed ust that - a fact and an inescapable one at that.


So now you're blaming the elevation of young people into positions that you believe should more appropriately be occupied by older ones as one aspect of this problem! This seems all the more to demonstrate that, in terms of practical reality, the existence of the problem itself is - as logic itself would apear to endorse - no respecter of any age boundaries. In any event, someone at all times has to have that responsibility of which you write and, if it is to be abused internationally on a vast scale by whomsoever may have it at any given time, it might arguably not matter too much whether or not the younger ones have constructive radical thought, especially were insufficient power, let alone responsiblity, vested in them to turn any such thought into practice.

Oh I thought it was all down to cocaine consumption

[Serial_Apologist]

Why and on what specific grounds and with what evidence have you concluded that it is indeed a kind of generational issue? Do you really not think that the kinds of greed evidenced by derivatives traders and others in their 20s and actual bankers of all ages (albeit perhaps more by those of middle age by virtue of the seniority of their positions within those banks) are equally responsible for this kind of thing? Whilst I do not doubt your second sentence, I would add that (a) many of the presumed-guilty bankers did not even expect to be found out and (b) the fact that the rest of the world would have immense difficult in surviving were the banks were regulated out of business is indeed ust that - a fact and an inescapable one at that.


So now you're blaming the elevation of young people into positions that you believe should more appropriately be occupied by older ones as one aspect of this problem! This seems all the more to demonstrate that, in terms of practical reality, the existence of the problem itself is - as logic itself would apear to endorse - no respecter of any age boundaries. In any event, someone at all times has to have that responsibility of which you write and, if it is to be abused internationally on a vast scale by whomsoever may have it at any given time, it might arguably not matter too much whether or not the younger ones have constructive radical thought, especially were insufficient power, let alone responsiblity, vested in them to turn any such thought into practice.

Er, I don't thing that is what Lat is actually saying, ahinton. As I read him, he is arguing that young people with the potential of bringing radical new perspectives to solving the banking problem are prematurely being slotted into a loaded agenda by virtue of having to make decisions based on that agenda.

Also, why always do you have to draw a doom-laden picture of insurmountable problems? Nobody is arguing that banks would have to be regulated out of business. Where do you get that impression from? The banks?

[ahinton]

From the second link:

"In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax."

But, pace JohnSkelton's argument, it could surely be claimed, could it not, that had those taxpayers only followed his shining example it would not and indeed could not have cost them £300m after all!

[ahinton]

Oh I thought it was all down to cocaine consumption

Does it actually matter what it's down to?(!)...

[amateur51]

But, pace JohnSkelton's argument, it could surely be claimed, could it not, that had those taxpayers only followed his shining example it would not and indeed could not have cost them £300m after all!

And then where would we be, apart from Monte Carlo?

Always assuming that JS wasn't having a larf, innit

[amateur51]

Does it actually matter what it's down to?(!)...

I think so, yes - that's why I wrote that