Here is a recent BBC article on bankers bonuses: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12131092
It reports that the Royal Bank of Scotland may pay £1bn in bonuses with the Barclays paying £5bn to £6bn in bonuses. I dread to think what the total bonus payout is going to be for all banks. To put these figures in to some perspective, the cost to provide a university education without an increase in tuition fees was roughly £5bn. So if just one bank did their social duty then the UK would be able to continue funding a world class education.
The tens of billions of pounds being paid out in bonuses is enough to prevent huge portions of the unnecessary cuts now being imposed on the Great people of Britain. It could have stopped thousands of people from loosing their homes. It could have prevented hundreds of thousands loosing their jobs. It could have given small businesses the loan they desperately needed to get over the worst of the recession. The list is endless when the sums of money are so huge.
Yet our bankers are so arrogant, so greedy and so shameless that they think they deserve luxury holidays, cars, cruises and houses for screwing up our economy, whilst hundreds of thousands of people's lives are ruined. I'm sure in our modern day enlightened society we are meant to punish those who cause harm and assist those who are hurt? Why is it then that we allow these economic charlatans to steal our money and line their own pockets?
Are we really going to let them do this? How low must our hope for this world be to allow such blatant thievery to flourish? The people with the most immediate power to prevent this, our politicians, our law makers, have stood idly by. It reminds me of a quote I recall loosely - For evil to triumph it only takes good men to stand idly by.
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