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Ranting into the ether about banks

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    #26
    Ranting into the ether about banks

    Not much to add other than some anecdotal weight to the differences in pay within a bank. I previously worked in an investment bank and there were teams famous for the money they were making and the pay they were receiving. At the same time there were other teams that made little profit or made losses and were treated as black sheep. It's also telling that as someone working on the other side (i.e. applying the brakes) we were seen (and compensated) as a cost centre and tolerated rather than appreciated when we pointed out risks.

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      #27
      Ranting into the ether about banks

      This probably isn't relevant at all but I used to be a credit controller and a bloody good one (not as good as the wife though). One of my greater ideas was to get myself taken out of the accounts office and into the sales office. I put up a large board with the names of who owed us money and, in extremely late payers' cases, if I heard the sales guys on the phone to them, I would get them to put them on hold and give them a bollocking if they were just giving them more credit willy-nilly.

      I left the company in the end because, in an argument between me and the sales guy about a big client that owed shitloads for a long time and wanted more credit, the company backed the sales guy. I walked. I wasn't going to waste time chasing some small company for £50 that has been owing for two weeks when there was thousands were owing for months.

      This has no relevance to this thread apart from that is my attitude to financial dealings. Sales aren't sales until the money is in the bank. If you have got debts don't take on more credit. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people investing in companies, companies need that as does the economy. I don't have any problem with people investing in currencies and commodities. Again, the economy needs that. Other than that, I don't trust anything else. Obviously, I am a simple man in these respects and that is why I would never make a financial banking success.

      However, as a simple man, I would expect that, by choice, I can keep away from the sort of convoluted betting that has been going on under the name of investment banking if I wish. However, I seem to own a bank and a half that has been doing this, who are making a loss, don't appear to be going to be paying me back soon and somehow I feel at a loss because I don't understand the fucked up system that they have devised in order to get us in this mess.

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        #28
        Ranting into the ether about banks

        Barclays stripped of £500 million.

        "Anyone, such as a bank, accountant, lawyer or tax adviser, who devises a seemingly legal tax avoidance plan, is obliged to tell the tax authorities about it within a few days of using it and marketing it to clients. More than 2,000 schemes have been disclosed in the past eight years."

        That's right, folks, 2,000 dodges.

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          #29
          Ranting into the ether about banks

          The Exploding Vole wrote:
          Barclays stripped of £500 million.

          "Anyone, such as a bank, accountant, lawyer or tax adviser, who devises a seemingly legal tax avoidance plan, is obliged to tell the tax authorities about it within a few days of using it and marketing it to clients. More than 2,000 schemes have been disclosed in the past eight years."

          That's right, folks, 2,000 dodges.
          DOTAS - Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes, it's technically known as.

          I eagerly await the defence of "But it's all legal!" from the usual quarters.

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            #30
            Ranting into the ether about banks

            Yeah I love that one. "It's all legal" being precisely the point campaigners are complaining about

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              #31
              Ranting into the ether about banks

              I'm actually quite suprised that the number is that low.

              Francois Holland proposes a 75% marginal rate for French millionaires.

              “I’ve seen the considerable increases in the remuneration of the leaders of the CAC40 [stock market index], to €2m [a year] on average. How can one accept that?” he said.

              “I’ve considered it and I am announcing here that above €1m [a year] the tax rate should be 75 per cent, because it is not possible to have this level of remuneration,” he declared.

              The proposal went far beyond his manifesto, which calls for a marginal tax rate of 45 per cent on incomes above €150,000, and wrongfooted his campaign budget chief who was forced to admit on another TV programme a few minutes later that he was not aware of the move.

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                #32
                Ranting into the ether about banks

                has this been posted yet?

                In 1989, the CEOs of the seven largest banks in the US earned an average of $2.8 million, almost a hundred times the annual income of the average US household. In the same year, the CEOs of the largest four UK banks earned £453,000, fifty times average UK household income. These are striking inequalities. Yet by 2007, at the height of the financial sector boom, CEO pay at the largest US banks had risen nearly tenfold to $26 million, more than five hundred times US household income, while among the UK’s largest banks it had risen by an almost identical factor to reach £4.3 million, 230 times UK household income in that year.
                Fromthe LRB

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                  #33
                  Ranting into the ether about banks

                  (Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc has fired as many as 40 senior executives for violating a “no-jerk” rule and behaving in a way that embarrasses the company, The Times reported.

                  The employees were encouraged to find other jobs, the paper said, citing an interview with Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond. Bankers who spent 44,000 pounds ($68,952) on wine at a London restaurant were the “no-jerk rule personified”, he said, according to the report.

                  Diamond is yet to make his recommendation to the bank’s remuneration committee regarding annual staff bonuses and the payouts are likely to fall, Diamond said, according to the paper.

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                    #34
                    Ranting into the ether about banks

                    How much good will could a bank generate by filming the dismissals and putting them on youtube for everyone to get their weekly dose of Schadenfreude? You could sign up a lot of customers this way, I think.

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                      #35
                      Ranting into the ether about banks

                      You really don't want your depositors seeing how severance packages are made.

                      These guys aren't being frog-marched out of their offices.

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                        #36
                        Ranting into the ether about banks

                        Market forces.

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                          #37
                          Ranting into the ether about banks

                          These people should be in prison.

                          (And I know that makes me wide open for a lecture on how I don't know as much about banks as they do; so what - I don't know as much about mugging as herberts who rob people in dark alleys)

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                            #38
                            Ranting into the ether about banks

                            Why?

                            I agree with you.

                            What I don't understand is how it could be possible that they haven't committed a criminal act in the UK (which is what the Government seems to be claiming).

                            Surely there must be a general fraud statute that could be applied here.

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                              #39
                              Ranting into the ether about banks

                              I just skim-read the first page of the thread, thinking it was about this case, then I realised that it was actually started in February.

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                                #40
                                Ranting into the ether about banks

                                The FSA full report on this is fascinating and I recommend reading it (maybe skip the intro, unless you need a primer on cash markets).

                                I especially appreciate the people who left themselves little lifeboats in email form in the event that this day came.

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                                  #41
                                  Ranting into the ether about banks

                                  Yeah, there are some really great emails in the final notice. Much better than usual.

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                                    #42
                                    Ranting into the ether about banks

                                    Fuck me, I was angry in February, wasn't I?

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                                      #43
                                      Ranting into the ether about banks

                                      What I don't understand is how it could be possible that they haven't committed a criminal act in the UK (which is what the Government seems to be claiming).
                                      I was listening (of course, on Radio 4) to an American guy from your version of the FSA and he was saying that, although it wasn't as much as people would like, your country is much happier to jail these fuckers whereas we tend to just fine them. Having said that, the SFO seem to be quite interested so there may be some jail sentences.

                                      Of course, the Tories and Labour are all holding their hands up saying how dreadful it is, the cunts.

                                      Interestingly, perhaps, the Tories have actually said that they think that the fines should be paid into the taxpayers' coffers as, presently, the Barclays fine will go into the FSA fund which means that the banks contributions into it will be reduced

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                                        #44
                                        Ranting into the ether about banks

                                        Bored of Education wrote: Fuck me, I was angry in February, wasn't I?
                                        If memory serves, you were pretty fighty in March, too.

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                                          #45
                                          Ranting into the ether about banks

                                          Remember, we need these people to get the country going...

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                                            #46
                                            Ranting into the ether about banks

                                            Looks like I am ending a relaxed June getting pissed off as well

                                            We don't need any inquiry to know what we should be doing

                                            No, of course not. Stupid idea

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                                              #47
                                              Ranting into the ether about banks

                                              Thirding the recommendations for the Barclays e-mails. They're ace. I expect "done for you big boy" to become the catchphrase of the summer.

                                              The Sun evidently has a piece today entitled "Sign on you Crazy Diamond", which is also true quality.

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                                                #48
                                                Ranting into the ether about banks

                                                Bored of Education wrote: Fuck me, I was angry in February, wasn't I?
                                                A bit of light relief for you. Well, it's worth getting angry about, but it's so ridiculous, I reckon you'll laugh.

                                                You know the Tories are blaming Ed Balls for not regulating the LIBOR rate (which, as far as I know, wasn't regulated by the Bank of England). See this from the debate yesterday:

                                                Chris Leslie, a shadow Treasury minister, specifically asked if the Treasury had a view on whether Libor should be covered by the government's new regulation. Mark Hoban, the Treasury minister, declined to express a view.
                                                Roughly translated "we haven't asked our donors yet".

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                                                  #49
                                                  Ranting into the ether about banks

                                                  If this is a place to rant about banks, then I'd like to thank Nat West - a bank I do not have an account with - for temporarily mislaying the only large transfer of money I have ever made, the deposit on our first and hopefully only house. Ruined everything. You cunts.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Ranting into the ether about banks

                                                    So much for the clunking fist of regulation.

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