In other words, the bankers are being paid healthy sums of cash because of the stimulus and bailout. Repeat after me: bankers are not worth the outrageously high money they are demanding and receiving. They like the "free market" lie so much, let 'em have it. What part of this story is being missed by the White House who continue to have such great faith in a Wall Street led recovery? Oh sure, there's still the tough talk but look at the actions or lack of actions by the administration. And the GOP? Ha! They're even more in love with allowing bankers to get paid for delivering mediocre results.
Shouldn't people actually have to do something special to command deep six figure payouts or is corporate elite socialism OK? The story is from the UK though the end result is quite similar in the US.
Bank bosses have done little to improve performance at their companies despite the recent round of strong results and will be all but powerless in the event of a double-dip downturn, Standard & Poor's Ratings (S&P) warned yesterday.
The rating agency said Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC and Barclays had all posted "encouraging" first-half profits this month.
But S&P also warned that this cannot be taken to be a sustained trend, saying the reversal of fortunes was largely down to a rebound in the wider economy and the help of Government stimulus packages. These economic and market developments will "continue to disproportionately influence UK bank ratings throughout the remainder of 2010", the ratings agency's analysts said. While S&P said banking bosses' had contributed to the positive results by cutting costs, diversifying assets and strengthen their balance sheets, it said that "the more important contributory factors were the developments beyond the control of the banks' management".
