Who gets the 36% pay increase...?

Who would you recommend to get a 36% pay increase this year?

Perhaps the Fukushima 50 who risked their lives time and again to bring the nuclear power plant in Japan under control?

Nurses? Carers of sick, disabled and / or elderly relatives and friends?

Troops in Afghanistan?


Ordinary folk hard hit by rising costs and the recession?

Nah - surely the truly deserving group are....

... US & UK - Bankers!

Yep - after barely a pause for breath, the bankers are back at the trough like the 2008 taxpayer funded bank bailouts never happened!

Never in the field of human greed has so much more cash been awarded to so few by so many - particularly astonishing as the 'few' keep on doing such a great job of ruining the lives of so many!

The [FT] has the low down on the lorry loads of loot that the bankers are carrying off!

Here are the highlights!

• Bank chiefs’ average pay in the US and Europe leapt 36 per cent last year to $9.7m, according to data compiled for the Financial Times, despite variable performance across the sector.

[The Haze loves that! If you have been tossed out of your home and lost your job as a result of the banker created recession, then remember its just 'variable performance across the sector' - and here we were thinking that 2008/9 meltdown, massive bank bailouts and subsequent ongoing global recession were something slightly more serious than that!]

• Two of the industry’s biggest names – Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive, and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein – were paid more than 15 times their 2009 earnings.

[So that's $21,000,000 for the hard pressed Mr. Dimon and $19,600,000 for Mr Blankfein.]

• In the UK, the chief executives of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland were awarded cash and stock bonuses valued at more than $26m last year. That contrasts with 2009, when all four declined bonuses in a nod to public and political furore.

[Glad to see that state ownership doesn't put the brakes on the banking gravy train! Strangely the bankers think this is all perfectly fine! The real story is not bankers greed rewarding themselves for monumental failure with huge increases it is in fact... ]

• “...the progress on ensuring bonuses are deferred, paid in shares and subject to clawback and performance targets, rather than the headline figure,” said Angela Knight, British Bankers’ Association chief executive.

[Ah The Haze understands - so its not HOW MUCH these people are paid - it is how the figures appear to the public who have a bit of a bee in their bonnet about bonuses at the moment]

anyway we have the FT to help us with our analysis!

• "The leap in average pay last year for the chief executives of 15 leading US and European banks suggests the era of contrition for the financial crisis is well and truly over."

[Really! Sarcasm is beneath The Haze but.... REALLY!!?!? ]

• Bankers rebut politicians’ accusations that they have simply returned to business as usual after two years of paying lip service to public indignation

[ Well what would us ever give us that idea! The meddling media I expect! ]

• Even at $14m, Mr Blankfein is earning a fraction of the $70m he took home in 2007.

[you have to feel sorry for them really]

• Global regulators, convinced that bankers’ reliance on bonus payments encouraged excessive risk and short-term decision making, have demanded banks overhaul the structure of executive pay to align risk better with long-term institutional performance. Banks have responded largely by altering the mix of pay awarded, rather than reducing the overall amount.

[Well quite - it was the only feasible solution as bankers contribute so much to society -]


Haze comment: Once again the bankers have proved that their inflated sense of their own self worth is matched only by their greed. They are running circles around the regulators on pay and bonuses.


All of the pre-conditions that caused the 2008 financial crash are unchanged - as we have reported elsewhere - traders are taking bets on the next financial crisis and it must surely be on its way.


The politicians who are failing in their public duty to protect the public from the banks will never be forgiven when the next set of bank bail outs is needed - of course the bankers will have pocketed a fortune of fortunes by then - meanwhile we lose home helps and libraries to pay for it.


if anyone needed an example of the very flower of capitalism then this is it! What will it take for us to rebel?