So the average Goldman Sachs banker is about to trouser almost five hundred thousand pounds as this year's bonus. Now don't get me wrong. I am sure they all work very hard for it. Lots of entertaining and late night trips to bars along with those essential visits to New York on executive jets. Apparently Bank of America, despite having received large sums of taxpayers' cash is advising its senior executives to continue using private jets in the interests of 'security and convenience.' I must say I am sure I would find sitting in a padded leather seat with some dashing steward serving me Martinis (shaken, not stirred) a lot safer and a great deal more convenient, but that's hardly the point is it?
I have heard all sorts of daft nonsense this week as to why it is 'quite right and proper' that banks should be allowed to pay huge sums this year to the chosen few, despite the mess that their industry has wreaked on the global economy. Everything from 'banks should not be afraid to reward their staff properly,' to we need to 'incentivise the wealth creators.' What hogwash. The facts are quite simple. Were it not for huge sums of taxpayers money being lent one way or another to support these banks none of them would exist right now, and that even includes the mighty Goldmans. If it hadn't been for the fallout that the rest of us would have suffered we should have let them all go to the wall last year. Let the repo men come and repossess their Ferraris. But of course we couldn't let that happen, so we had to bail them out and because we had to do it in such a hurry our governments couldn't nail down the terms of the loans in such a way that bonuses would definitely be off the table.
So we are where we are. But whilst the rest of us quietly choke on our Cornflakes as we read how much they are all getting, there may be a silver lining. Savills, the upmarket estate agent recently reported rising property prices in some parts of London, with demand for premier properties outstripping supply. And where the London property market leads the rest of the country eventually follows. So it may take a few months yet but it is just possible that the UK property market may be finally emerging from the deep freeze. Those bonuses to the obnoxious city bankers, whilst we hate them might just help things along a bit. Hopefully if they start spending money at the top of the market some of it will trickle down to the lower and middle parts of the London market. Then, if prices rise a little in the suburbs this will filter out to the home counties and then eventually across the UK as a whole.
So I shall be keeping my eye out in the coming weeks for viewers driving Ferraris, talking loudly on mobile phones and being generally obnoxious. But I will still take their cash. Maybe someone from Goldman Sachs would like to buy my house? Offers please!
By Samantha May
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