Barely nine months had passed since the police were advising City workers not to wear suits, to reschedule meetings and, if possible, work from home. Then it was almost as if nothing had happened, banks were at it again, dishing out bonuses to traders, who explained to a dismayed public they worked hard; adding, if they were inadequately paid they would decamp, as though there was some offshore banking paradise waiting to snap them up.
Stock markets looked better. Fitzwilliams and Kennedy exulted. The end of the recession was in sight and to their immense joy they had survived. The worse was over, the end of capitalism had been avoided, even the luckless savers in failed British and Icelandic banks would be covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The City and Wall Street rejoiced at the news bonuses were back in fashion. But when Merrill Lynch paid its top investment banker a bonus of almost thirty four million dollars, it was like a slap in the face to all those who had lost their job or had lost their savings. Even more galling was the news that just two years earlier, Merrill Lynch had been one of the key advisors in the disastrous HBOS-Amro deal, a deal which was to cost the British taxpayer billions. It was true that certain bankers worked perhaps fifty, sixty or more hours a week ― no different to a great many poor workers, but bankers forgot they owed their bonuses to millions of shareholders, account holders and taxpayers, who at the end of the day footed the bill.
The absurdity of the compensation and bonus culture was laid open visible to all to see what it really was. When banks made profits, those who worked for them ― notably their top executives, were well paid and when they got into trouble those same persons were still well paid, but most maddening of all, when they lost money their banks were bailed out by the taxpayer whilst those same top executives continued to be well paid.
The fine words of Barack Obama were lost on bankers who scrambled to fill their pockets with money that did not belong to them: short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity, where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. History would certainly look back on the early years of the twenty first century as an age of extraordinary greed and irresponsibility.
Banking and finance arrogantly brushed aside the fact that the funds they used belonged to countless millions of lesser mortals, whose savings and contributions to pension funds had been entrusted to them, who paid interest on home loans and loans for consumer goods. Savers and small investors were routinely gulled by the offer of introductory low interest rates, mis-sold policies of all kinds, their pension funds mismanaged and were waylaid by stock market fluctuations. Banks had become so used to excessive profits for the benefit of a privileged few, who surreptitiously skimmed the vast sums of money that flowed through the system each day, that they forgot the age old principal of inherent trust that should exist between lenders and borrowers, the very foundation on which the banking the system was built.
It was a curious turn of events when the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Tony Blair, led the hunt by announcing: We have to clean up the banking system. The British government bore its share of responsibility in the debacle; after all it had encouraged banks in the plunder of the money entrusted to them.
Inevitably the witch hunt led to an attack on Fred the Shred’s luxurious home, forcing leading banks and financial institutions to reinforce security measures for their personnel as a climate of fear set in. The media naturally poured oil onto the flames whilst fanning the public’s fear with an avalanche of bad news headlines announcing job losses and closures.
For more than a decade a great many working class people had been persuaded they could enjoy the pleasures that only the better-off had been able to afford. Goods that had once been considered luxuries were democratised. Ordinary working class families could enjoy the pleasure of two holidays a year in the sun; often in far off places. Tom Barton had observed them first-hand ― at other end of the world ― in Kovalam, an unlikely holiday resort situated at the southern tip of the Subcontinent, where working class Englishmen could belatedly enjoy the privileges of a dead empire; lording it up in their white Freddie Mercury vests, shoulders tattooed and oiled, heads shaven, dragging their forbearing misseses behind them. The scene had reminded Barton of a Southend bank holiday weekend…under the heat of the tropical sun.
Even the unexpected stock market upswing did little to change the country’s outlook; a bleak future filled with rising unemployment and the threat of civil unrest and violence. The rich and the wealthy would certainly need protection if the reactions of the newly impoverished classes turned nasty. For the first time since the Thatcher years, and her destruction of trade-union power, anarchists appeared on the streets with likes of Fred the Shred becoming the targets of their ire.