Merchants

A quick note as preparing for an exam and my daughter gets married in a week, but I just had to push this out there.

As the world’s attention wander’s to Afghanistan, unemployment, the cost of fuel, the falling house prices, empty shops on the high street, MP’s expenses (by the way they should be done for fraud, just like anyone else would have been) and climate warming, we seem to be forgetting what kicked this all off. It was the Bankers and their greed. The bean counters that demand growth because that is what the spreadsheets said.

I should probably explain for those that don’t know cockney rhyming slang that Merchant is short for Merchant Banker which rhymes with Wanker

Merchant: “We must increase our loan business.”

Reason: “But everyone out there has got as much debt as they can handle”

Merchant: “Send them more info to get the to borrow more”

Reason: “But they won’t be able to pay it back”

Merchant: “Interesting! Are there any others that we could lend to that won’t be able to pay back?”

Reason: “Why would you want to do that?”

Merchant: “Because we’ll be able to hit our growth targets, and collect a big fat bonus”

Reason: “That’s madness”

Merchant: “It’s good innovative business strategy”

Well they are at it again paying themselves massive salaries and bonuses, even those that are majority owned by governments, where you would expect some restraint. Why?

They have sold the “fear factor”. They have somehow convinced there masters that this is the going rate. They are good people and if we don’t pay them this much they’ll leave to work somewhere else.

The reaction should be to show them the door, not bow down and give in. Anyone that has managed a team for any length of time will know, if someone thinks they are so important to the team that you cannot afford to lose them and they leverage that to get their own way, if you give in you’ve handed leadership of that team over, because they will be back asking for more and more. Eventually they'll leave anyway. By that time the rest of the team will have lost all respect in you as a leader too!

These people have destroyed other people’s lives and because they did it with a balance sheet and not napalm it seems to be OK. We should take note of the French Revolution and guillotine these latter-day aristocracy that act as if they are above the law.

They really have go off lightly and I can’t figure out why. I probably have the wrong spreadsheet!

I feel better now. Back to the exam revision.