During this crisis, it's to the benefit of everyone to have the US and UK (and Europe) coordinating their efforts. We've all seen the corporate routine of playing one city/state/country against another and the results are predictable. The banksters have played this game well and have established a comfortable lifestyle without delivering much benefit. The more countries can work together and establish base ground rules for what is acceptable, the better. If the Wall Street types want to move out to an unstable part of the world, go for it. Their families will love living in such conditions and something tells me the government support may be a bit different in times of crisis. Real capitalism might turn out to be more challenging than these over-paid fraudsters ever imagined.
Bankers would face a £25,000 cap on cash bonuses under plans being examined by the Treasury last night in a bid to silence the public outcry over the City's culture of huge rewards and dangerous risk-taking.
But the move to stifle growing anger over bonuses at the Royal Bank of Scotland was in danger of being overshadowed as Gordon Brown's righthand man in the cabinet, Ed Balls, said the world was facing the most serious recession for 100 years.
His remarks, the most alarming to be made by a senior government minister, interpret the crisis as worse than the great depression of the 1930s.
The Treasury wants RBS - now 68% owned by the government - to rein in large bonuses in a year when it is scheduled to post losses running to billions of pounds. Ministers are trying to negotiate a £25,000 cap on cash bonuses, with the remainder being taken in share options.
The government's effort to show that it is responding to public anger over the bonus culture was undermined yesterday however when it emerged that the man appointed by the government to conduct a review of City pay was himself given multi-million pound bonuses while serving as European chairman of US bank Morgan Stanley.
