I was looking over the Bloomberg web site today and thinking of George Orwell’s classic “Animal Farm.” The reason was a story on that site about the CEO of JPMorgan Chase who was reported to have threatened the British that if they do, indeed, go through with their 50 percent tax on financial executive discretionary bonuses in excess of 25,000 pounds, a huge Canary Wharf project in London that JPMorgan had planned to build might not get built there.
The reason this got me thinking about “Animal Farm” was because in that book the pigs had taken over the farm. All animals were still equal, of course, but some were more equal than others. And if the pigs couldn’t feed to their own enormous heart’s content, they’d set the dogs on the other beasties.
The British government can’t back down on that 50 percent excess bonus tax now, of course. It would be political suicide and a socially incendiary thing to do as well. But I’m glad this threat was made. It’s important that everyone understand, fully and completely, the thinking that governs the leaders of the banking community in this country and around the world.
These people seem to believe, they honestly and truly seem to believe, that unless they are compensated to the extraordinarily generous degree they think themselves entitled, while so many others are suffering so badly in large measure because of their past performance, the civilized world as we know it will end. I don’t happen to share that belief.
Congress and the Obama Administration will next year fashion legislation that will determine whether the bankers’ view of themselves will continue to govern much of the economic lives of the rest of us. Let us hope that finally. FINALLY, decency, equity, commonsense, and simple humanity will work to diminish the size of their share of the collective pie and increase the size of our own.