Top bankers wreck our peace of mind and create an environment where our children can't get jobs.   They gamble away our pension and fixed incomes which we thought would see us out.  Thanks a lot.  They ruin small businesses and wreck havoc with big banks, they foreclose houses, take away jobs and endanger the world's security.  And what happens to them...THEY GO RIGHT ON REWARDING THEMSELVES!  AND WE LET THEM!   They buy yachts. 

We can't control them because it isn't ‘legal.'  Well, are any of their offences legal?  Are they ethical?  Why can't these harmful practices be eliminated?  Talk about health and safety!

Bankers figure if they keep their heads low for a while, all the lynch mobs will go away, and they can get back to their fun and games.  This is what comes of so-called ‘self-regulation.'  Funny, ha-ha.  Why can't the FSA regulate City bonuses?  What's stopping them?  No one stopped naming names when it came to the MPs.  So why not the bankers?  What is it about these white collar bank robbers that make them above the law?

‘Where Are the Customers' Yachts?' by Fred Schwed, (Marketplace Books), was a best seller in the '40s, decrying financial greed in the banking classes.   So this is nothing new.    We don't have Depression soup lines, but we have economic collapse on a global, universal scale.

Have the bankers forgotten all this already?  For lavish rewards to return to the City less than a year after the banking system collapsed is obscene.  Multi-million pound ‘golden hellos' to new recruits are back in fashion.  Three investment bankers are being given two years' bonuses, even though the FSA have recommended that such deals be scrapped.  And over at Goldman Sachs, the Princes of Darkness are beating all previous records with their bonuses, to hell with the fact it might threaten the stability of the whole globe.

The FSA only gives 'guidance' against these practices.  What if our criminal courts only gave 'guidance?'

The other day I drove past Jeeves, the society cleaners on the Fulham Rd.  Most of us know that it's cheaper to buy a new shirt than to have one cleaned at Jeeves.   There was a sign in the window, "Bankers Still Welcome!"  I had to laugh.  Jeeves is about the only place where they are. 

If bankers are up to their old tricks, they should be labelled the pariahs of our culture.  I don't buy this mantra that grotesque rewards in the City are justified by the fact that bonuses are needed to attract the best of the best.  You could say that about any career...doctors, teachers, journalists.  What's so important about a banker being the ‘best?'  It won't make his clients any richer.  Wouldn't you rather have the best heart surgeon?  What bankers are the best at is making themselves rich.

And another thing, who cares if London loses its reputation as a financial centre?  Who benefited from that except the bankers themselves?  An exodus from here of ‘self-interest' would be a very good thing.  As George Pitcher says in The Daily Telegraph, "The greatest moral failing of the banks is that they exist to serve themselves alone."

Where are the clients' yachts?  That pretty well sums it up.