City bankers are expected to see their bonuses rise to almost £7 billion following a “bumper year” for financial companies, economists predicted. The amount bankers take home is expected to rise despite the new 50 per cent tax rate on pay over £150,000. The majority of City workers will take home more money this year than last, according to research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. The breakeven point is an income of £300,000, above which workers take home less pay due to the new higher take rate, it said. It comes after official figures revealed earlier this week that unemployment in the wider economy reached a 16-year high of 2.5 million.
Just when you think it couldn’t get worse news then arrives of Goldman Sacked’s bonuses. Goldman Sacked's bankers are on track to share in a bumper $20bn (£12.3bn) pay and bonus pot after the investment bank reported a 65% rise in second-quarter profits despite the global recession. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/5828309/Goldman-bankers-in-line-for-record-20bn-pay-day-after-profits-soar.html The bank, which has about 6,000 UK staff, is set to pay out record sums to employees just months after repaying $10bn of US Treasury capital and having suffered its first loss in nine years at the end of 2008.
Has it been a bumper year for you? Has it been a bumper year for the poor and hungery of the world? Have the banks managed to create things we can eat or usefully use? That’s a big NO then!
According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs' (UNDESA) report, the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2010, 47 million more people globally became poor or remained in poverty in 2009 than would have been the case at 2008 growth rates, and 84 million more than would have poor at 2004-7 growth rates. Of these, 19 and 40 million respectively are in south Asia. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/No-financial-crisis-impact-Indias-poor-grew-by-34-mn/articleshow/5553859.cms
It’s clear then while bankers feast on their bonuses the rest of the world got poorer and more excluded, our public services, our jobs and pensions were targeted. Is this due to human greed of bankers? No, of course not, bankers continue to grow rich because they have power to create money out of thin air.
Don’t take our word for it take Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Rothschild Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920s, speaking at the University of Texas in 1927. “The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin. Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. But if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”