The real reason for anti-banker fury

As the board of AIG (above) celebrate their bonuses, bankers complain that the media is treating them unfairly

"Please don't use my name," they plead. Every single banker I have interviewed recently has demanded anonymity. Financial types are being demonized by the media, they explain.

That's rubbish.

Yeah, so we describe them as "slime-sucking scum from the lowest pits of hell", but why take that negatively? We mean it affectionately.

On the other hand, when it comes to despised professions, journalists are kinda happy not to be top of the league table for once.
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Most nervous about being identified are bankers who have received bonuses. I know one who gave his bonus away, but, strangely, not to me.

"It's all semantics," a nervous banker said to me over a coffee (which he paid for). "In the dictionary, 'bonus' means something extra, but that's not what it means in finance."

"So what does it mean?" I asked skeptically. "Is it a species of lizard? A small town in Latvia?" (Being facetious may be the lowest form of wit, but no other forms were available that early in my day, by which I mean the crack of noon.)

"In the finance business, your bonus is just a deferred part of your pay," he said. "The delay forces you to hang around and not run off to do something else."

"So, let me guess, you would much rather have worked as an unpaid volunteer building toilets for slum dwellers?" I said.

"Yeah, that's right," he said. "How did you know? Anyway, the deferred payment forces you to work really hard, so we are up for 7 am meetings, we're there till late at night. We work weekends. We have no lives. We have no fun. We have no friends."

"You got me," I said.

"That's what I mean," he said darkly. "Anyway, bonuses are not 'extras'. Retention pay is written into the contract and we've worked for it."

Warming to his theme, he thumped the table.

This was a bad idea, since the table was about the size of a plate, and the edge of his fist landed in a vanilla slice, causing fake cream to spurt over his Bally shoes.

"We should get sympathy, not abuse. How would you feel if you did your job, got paid late, and then everyone criticized you?"

"I'm a journalist. Getting paid late and being criticized is my whole life," I replied.
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This guy's argument was true but irrelevant. Whether you call it "bonus" or "deferred pay" makes no difference.

The public is annoyed that bankers get yachts and sports cars and big apartments, while the rest of us don't.

For years we put up with it because they told us that what they did made everyone richer. Now we find out that it has made us all poorer. No wonder everyone's hopping mad.

One reader put it this way: "In 1980, an average Fortune 500 CEO made 40 times more than the average person who worked for him or her. By 2008 it was more than 500 times more."
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My suggestion was that all AIG people in the US immediately move to Asia. In this region, the rich are not resented or criticized.

"Because Asians respect money?" he asked.

I said: "No. It's because rich people here live in walled compounds with massive guard dogs."

Comments

[Rockdex]

There's a new word in Webster;CEO;vulgar term in insurance and banking for someone who likes to piss in public.

[Oban]

I'm sorry for normal people who lose their jobs but I'm not sorry that a big shake-up has happened in the financial scene. All over the world the gap between rich and poor was getting wider.In many places it was really obscene. The rich always said that they should be given full freedom to do what they like because they would make all of us rich (this is the Singaport argument) but look at the gini coefficient. The rich have been making themselves rich and the poor have been getting poorer.

[fardel]

There was a joke

What is the difference between a French car- employee and his american counter -part?
The american employee walks home after work and sees his CEO drive by in a Limousine
One day , I shall drive one like this, he says
The French employee watches his boss drive by in a middle-size car ( there are only twenty Limousines in France,and no french boss would dare drive one in France)
One day , you will walk home , just like me.
It seems that the French version of the SARS* virus has spread worldwide:it is called the FSARS

SARS :French Sneak Anti Rich Syndrom.

[Julie]

Another good joke, but I think it should be called French Socialist Anti Rich Syndrome.

[Chamin]

Oh my, jokes can be very serious things :o).

[Lens]

Hmm.. somehow the banker seem to think that they are the only ones who work till 7am and till late nites. Least for the rest of us, when we perform badly in our work, our impact is confined to ourselves and our company. Not ohter people's money.

So, how can bankers say that they are unfairly treated? Just brings to mind if they think that they are unfairly treated when they wear their expensive clothes, eat their expensive food and drive their expensive cars when things go well. All I can say to investment bankers are "Stop being babies, take responsibiliy and apologise. Maybe then are the public more sympathetic to your plea. In tne meantime, stop playing the injured when others are bleeding more than you."

[laffing]

Nury you are totally wicked, that picture you say is of the "AIG board" is really a picture of the cross-dressing cast of the Rocky Horror Show, how you can get away with this cheeky stuff I have no idea!! One day you will get in BIGGGG trouble

[fardel]

Silence

Sure, my homemade pizza had a strange taste that night, but the smile of my baby daughter gave a new meaning to life.

Hey financers :
look good at my money
You will not have one cent of it, not today, not tomorrow

[fardel]

Rocky horror show ?

What is happening worldwide is Rocky,
It is a horror,
It is a show, where we, the small guys play first role
But it is not funny,and it does not have a happy ending

As for financers complaining, it is as bad ,humanly as the TV news showing at length the ordeal of an old lady who had lost her mansion to a bush fire in California, but would not show for more than two seconds the ordeal of a few families ,destroyed by aviation bombing in the Western Middle East, the Middle Middle East, and the Eastern Middle East, by the same country; at the same time

The medias have become a disgrace to Mankind,polishing gangsters shoes, but despising the little guys who make the world spin right
When I was young and stupid (I.E when I thought that tycoon were respectable ) I had one of those conversation with tycoon, whom I was driving to a business meeting.
It had happened after two major typhoons had reduced the island economical future to waiting two hours in line at a bank to get a few Dollars, then wait a few hours for one bottle of water, and another two hours in line for a can of food and a pound of vegetables per family.
tycoon :
My business is not making money, I do not have money,I have to close it, leaving you and the other guys out.
Me: Silence ( horror silence )
After business meeting, I am flying tycoon home in private airplane.
We are flying over property: a mansion , on a peninsula, with half a mile private beach.

Tycoon:
Can you see this property, I am buying it, only one million US dollars.
-silence
Sure, my homemade pizza had a strange taste that night, but the smile of my baby daughter gave a new meaning to life.

Hey financers :
look good at my money
You will not have one cent of it, not today, not tomorrow

[Wee-Leng]

I read this article with honest disgust. Apparently this banker and from that so-called interview seemed to be a very unhappy banker. Apparently also the bonus his/she received is viewed to be the due pay for the late nights, stress and what nots that came with the job.

Sometimes it is ironically surprising that such folks would still prefer to be the banker whom they themselves call the big bad wolf and yet to succumb themselves into such distress state. What utter rubbish. On this point, this daft banker should just quite the job, and get into something he/ she believes in. Don’t be a bloody hypocrite like everyone else.

Or is it that he/she is just like the prostitute in our dark alleys that while knowing the job is ethically wrong and yet hanging on to it like a leech because it is far more lucrative than anything else he/she can ever imagine? In other words, hanging on because this is a lucrative cash cow which permits financing a fancy nice car, huge bungalow, lifestyle of a jetsetter and what ever luxurious shits one wished to embark? Despite it all, being a job where the article claimed to be as lowly and despised as probably, a loan shark next door? or even the drug pusher who supplies dope to the teenagers in the backyard? I do wonder, why, why bother complaining and give such statement? No one's shoving a pistol on the head to work as a banker.

There is some truth to the lowly statement however and I am not denying that, because, these movers and shakers in the global market have broken many, many, many homes.

I agree, these irresponsible people ought to be shot but it is however, not right to shoot the profession downright that all bankers are now seen to be those lowly creatures that aim to be breaking people’s livelihood. I don’t think that is the correct statement to be made and said.

I am not defending the fact that I am a banker nor am I defending that the credit crunch which caused the world a bottomless global financial whirlwind is the work of irresponsible bankers. I don’t deny that.

But what I find is utter rubbish is the fact that Vittachi, the so called writer and the interviewee is making such sweeping statements that I am in opinion that they ought to be given a tight slap on the face, as a wake up call. To be publishing it in a a newspaper where millions read (on this article) and to have no common sense to write and make such statements is simply downright absurd. It is just as well to be calling all men as rapist since men are the villains to all rapes anyway.

Writing such article is as irresponsible as those bankers who made the world go bankrupt I say. Have some maturity for Heaven’s sake.

On the bonus example, any board of directors can just resolve not to give a single cent. Then what, is he/she going to then lament that it actually a pay cut for all the late nights and stress?

Don’t ever, ever give me this piece of crap because as a banker who has been in this job of a good/bad 10 years, I have had my share of late nights, sleepless nights, 20 hours of work a day, walk, talk, sleep about work. Why?

Because I have made a decision that this is my choosen job to fianance my choosen lifestyle.

See, it is all about choice. Please, don’t go personal just because one feels one have been short changed in some way or another, but hey, those crazy hours and stress has its perks. Don’t ever deny that. I think the interviewee should be more professional than this. Then again, if he/she has been professional enough, he /she won’t have made such statement about bonus in particular.

Oh, just go get a life. Quit your job if it is that bad and do something like clean the clogged drains in Klang Valley, afterall, such job is far more noble than a banker right?