The Bankers Still Don't Get It Why We Hate Them: India Knight (London Times)

[Captain Hilts]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article7107144.ece

The City’s repellent Caligulas just won’t lie down

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Just when you think you’ve reached the limits of your nausea, up pops a new detail to keep things ticking. Last week it was Tetsuya Ishikawa, 31, who worked at the London office of Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, on the sub-prime mortgage fund set up by Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre. Fabulous Fab being the one who was charged with a £650m fraud by the US authorities for, it is alleged, deliberately selling bad mortgages in the American housing crash.

At the moment there is no evidence of Ishikawa having done anything wrong, although obviously we are in fairly murky waters here; personally, I find the whole culture so grotesque that it makes me want to join the Communist party.

In January, JP Morgan said it was giving nearly £5.7 billion in bonuses to its employees, despite G20 leaders calling for restraint, the introduction of windfall taxes and a public baying for bankers’ blood. Last week the Centre for Economics and Business Research said the amount bankers take home was expected to rise again. Unemployment may be at a 16-year high at 2.5m, small businesses may be struggling, but City workers will take home more than they did last year. The CEBR calculated that bonuses for this tax year would reach £6.8 billion, up from £6 billion.

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They still don’t get that they repulse us. In fact, they repulse us to the point where they have become a political issue. Why don’t they pipe down and hide? Anybody else would. But no, here they are with their obscene wealth and their hookers and their small-penis cars, when all anybody wants is for them to go away. To jail, ideally.