comment is free

The most brazen disdain for democracy in modern times

Bumper banker bonuses are back. And what is it really, if not grand-scale theft – from treasuries, customers and taxpayers


The sums will be breathtaking, starting with Friday's predicted payout of £18bn at the American bank, JP Morgan Chase. This is almost exactly what it cost the US taxpayer to rescue the bank a year ago. A similar sum is predicted at Goldman Sachs. This is happening at the heart of the western economy that has just endured its worst crash for 30 years, almost entirely through the doings of these banks and executives.

Since I delight in anti-state gestures, I have some admiration for devil-may-care effrontery, but this money is way beyond any concept of reward-for-work. A few thousand greedy souls benefited hugely over the past decade by gambling with shareholders' and customers' money. When, as tends to happen, the winning streak ended, they had to be rescued by the taxpayer.

They were rescued by claiming that the casinos in which they were peddling their "investments" were "too big to fail", despite Lehman Brothers being allowed to fail. These same banks have now returned to the tables and are playing their old games. In no sense is this money rightfully theirs. They are stealing – from shareholders, customers, national treasuries and, since much of the money goes offshore, taxpayers.

Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown continue to be mesmerised by these people. The two of them have bought hook, line and sinker some of the most tendentious arguments ever put into the public domain. They agreed with "too big to fail", and with the quite different line that bankrupt banks should not be nationalised, their deposits protected, and bad debts written off or down. This is despite the admirable "narrow banking" ideas put forward by the economist John Kay for the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, which were in part implemented in the nationalisation and restructuring of Northern Rock. Brown and Darling were told that RBS and Lloyds were somehow "different" and restructuring would be "difficult".

Darling, Brown and the Bank of England's Mervyn King continued pouring money into these banks – supported by the opposition and the media – even when the money was clearly not being used as the cabinet had insisted, on lending to the private sector. It was being used to underpin toxic loans, in effect to pay off gambling debts. Ministers went on giving the money, even when told that most was flowing overseas, until almost a trillion pounds had vanished over the counter.

The banks' refusal to boost high street lending was at least understandable, since the government was refusing to prop up high street demand and create conditions in which such lending was prudent. What is odd is that Darling, having fathered the most costly policy in British history, failed to reverse it when it had palpably failed. Bank lending to business remains at rock bottom.

That was merely the first snub by the bankers to the government. The second was in response to Darling's other warning that "bonuses have been a symptom of excessive behaviour of banks" and should stop. Again he could not have been clearer. He instructed his representatives at RBS, 84% owned by the government, and at Lloyds to stop them.

Again Darling was defied, this time by the RBS board with threats to resign – reiterated yesterday to the Commons finance committee by the RBS chief executive, Stephen Hester. He was like a football manager claiming that his strikers may have scored only own-goals, but should continue drawing bonuses because at least they were goals.

Hester insists that lavish bonuses for RBS gamblers are "in the best interests of the taxpayer". This is because, if their resumed winning streak continues, RBS executives might let the taxpayer in on a cut, after taking a predicted £2bn-£4bn next month on their own account.

The nearest Darling came to getting his hands on this cash is by taxing the bonuses, pound for pound, in advance. He thought it might raise £500m, but it may raise four times that. The banks may have no money for the high street but they have lots for themselves, even if it doubles the company's tax bill. When Hester was asked by the committee how he might present this to the public, the best he could reply was: "I might go on holiday for a long time." The answer oozed a guilty conscience.

Corporate remuneration is desperately in need of the sort of attention paid to corporate governance. It has moved from Galbraith's "warm personal gesture" by bosses to themselves, to what amounts to a conspiracy by groups of individuals to steal from their firms. Since 2000, stock market valuation by the FTSE 100 has declined 25% while relevant executive pay has risen 85%, and bonuses by 350%. Banks are worst because they deal in the largest sums and the opportunity for "percentage skim" is most lucrative.

The history of capitalism is the history of regulation. The 19th-century robber barons were curbed by labour and ­environment controls, free trade and competition laws. All sensible people accepted capitalism needed policing. But the internal structure of companies was left to personal ­relationships, aided by a rudimentary sense of fair play.

That sense has evaporated. In his account of the collapse of Enron, Malcolm Gladwell ascribed it to the impact of the consultants McKinsey, and its "talent culture". High flyers, often greedy narcissists in pursuit of bonuses, were identified, promoted and given their head without control. They moved restlessly round the corporation "thinking outside the box". What was good for these stars was assumed to be good for Enron. Eventually so many were outside the box that the box collapsed. "The needs of the customers and shareholders," wrote Gladwell, "became secondary to the needs of the stars."

The parallel with modern investment banking shrieks from the shelves of books already written on the credit crunch. The ­difference is that, unlike Enron, the banks have not collapsed. They have been rescued at the truly vast cost of £800bn of public money, and the ­culture of greed that occasioned that rescue remains intact. No one is ­lifting a finger.


Most popular