A whole basketful of rotten apples.OH how easily we forget. The banking crisis has eased - for now - and the greedy bankers who plunged us into the financial crisis just 12 months ago now demand the full restoration of their eye-wateringly enormous bonuses. Why is it, just for doing a job which is probably no more complex than what the rest of us do, they get more in annual bonuses than you and me get in a decade's worth of salary? I was watching Rogue Trader Rogue Trader A trader who acts independently of others - and, typically, recklessly - usually to the detriment of both the clients and the institution that employs him or her. In most cases this type of trading is high risk and can create huge losses. the other day - it's the film of how Nick Leeson Nicholas Leeson (born February 25, 1967) is a former derivatives trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank. Rise Leeson was born in Watford, north-west of London. brought down Barings Bank Barings Bank (1762 to 1995) was the oldest merchant banking company in London [1] until its collapse in 1995 after one of the bank's employees, Nick Leeson, lost $1.4 billion in speculation primarily on futures contracts. . In it, we see Nick moaning about a bonus of only around pounds 300,000 (and this was the mid 90s). His boss replies that he'll see if he can "get it to start with a 4". Leeson has pointed out in his autobiography the direct connection between lust for bonuses and the reckless stupidity which in his case allowed a single individual to bring down a bank. If one rotten apple can do that, small wonder that a whole basketful can and still does threaten the entire banking system. |
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