We are often told that investment bankers are much cleverer than the rest of us. But sometimes, they do seem to lack common sense. Their behaviour since the Crisis, in paying out $bns in bonuses to the lucky few, seems no way to appease understandable public anger over the cost of the banks’ bailout. The […]
Chemicals and the Economy
UK to tax bank bonuses at 90%
“The more things change, the more they stay the same“. Or, as the blog’s French-speaking readership might say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose“. When the blog started work in the chemical industry, in 1978, it was possible to pay up to 114% of one’s income as tax in the UK, if one […]
UK to tax bankers’ bonuses
UK Finance Minister Alistair Darling is widely reported today as being about to announce a ‘super-tax’ on bonuses paid to bankers working in the UK. The government’s argument, notes the BBC’s Robert Peston, is that “Investment banks are making exceptional profits, as a result of the intervention of government and the Bank of England to […]
Adultery signals for traders
My fellow-blogger, Barbara, cleverly spotted this week’s ‘Global Traders Summit’ in Singapore. Had this blog been there, it would have mentioned the latest, apparently fool-proof, way to determine stock market turning points, based on bankers’ interest in adultery. According to Bloomberg, the Illicit Encounters website has a major increase in traffic when either the market […]
Bankers turn to internet adultery
London’s largely-male banking community has a new way to pass its time, now financial markets have collapsed. According to Lucy Kellaway at the Financial Times, many are prospecting for adulterous affairs on a website called Illicit Encounters. Lucy says she has “picked up 247 men” since joining – including “a formerly powerful hedge fund manager, […]
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