To: "BBC News Channel"; "David Cameron"; "Nick Clegg"; "Merrick Cockell"; "Karen Buck"
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 2:32 PM
Subject: Dateline London: Gavin Esler asked: "Do the bankers just not get it?" in the discussion about bonuses & taxation of them.
The solution is not global at this point in time but localised for each country. I believe that there has to be a definition provided about what society is all about and what one expects from participating in that society. If you don't like it, then go somewhere else if you think you've got a better idea.
It just so happens that these people handle huge sums of money and have the power to charge what they want for their ability to create financing and investment capital and also generate huge amounts of profit for their own accounts by making markets in equities and bonds as well as trading in these with their own funds putting the firms at risk at various degrees.
1. I do not believe that they should be paid the vast amounts they receive by any means just because of their position and job.
2. I do not believe that any organisation or business sector has the right or should have the ability to dictate what it wants at the expense of society.
This is what has happened in finance, and it has been happening for decades out in the open for all to see since the early 1970s and most especially in the aftermath of the 1973/4 debacle and subsequent debacles.
1. These people all of whom including investment managers of all shapes and sizes as well as the investment bankers are paid vast sums for management fees which they do not earn that must be stopped. Nobody, but nobody, is worth that much.
I tried to reduce thus compensation made at corporate expense when I was a pension fund manager from 1977 to 1982. These people just do not earn nor are they worth what they are paid by those trustees responsible for the these institutional assets.
Corporations also pay huge fees for corporate finance which are not justified at all.
There is also a problem with well heeled individuals paying these huge management fees which result in sucking in the smaller investors, but that can be handled if the institutional investor, investment management and corporate finance are "re-aligned."
2. The problem of blackmail starts at the bottom and works its way to the top covering whole nations and the world. These guys and gals who do this work undercut and undermine their clients to create an atmosphere of fear so that they are afraid to not use their services.
This goes way back to the days when Morgan Guaranty Trust led by Carl Hathaway piped Wall Street and pension funds down the growth stock mania golden path of the early 1970s. Big corporations were afraid not to have Morgan Guaranty Trust as their investment manager in case they were wrong. Everyone else was afraid not to do what Morgan Guaranty Trust was doing.
By the end of the 1970s the likes of Salomon Brothers who was dealing in government securities and creating products for sale that were only the income or only the capital bits from government debt went on to cheat in the markets to such a degree that Warren Buffett had to be brought in to clean up its image in the 1990s.
He said recently on a BBC programme that he could not clean up the compensation problems that existed where they were getting too much. Warren Buffett pointed out quite correctly that these people just do not deserve this pay nor do they have any exceptional ability.
I recall being contacted by Salomon Brothers salesmen from time to time when I had about $130 million of fixed income securities in-house mostly in government debt. They would try to undermine me directly implying that I did not have the ability to manage this properly, but they could. There was also some insidious remarks made about going above my head to undermine me. I just ignored them.
These bankers and investment managers are bullies who will go on and on abusing everyone because of their positions of power and clout which has to be taken away from them. The only way this can be done is for the owner of the funds including the corporations and organisations to bring the work they do in-house and do it themselves.
It's a manner of common sense mostly and does not take a great deal of gee-whiz expertise. What has been missing in these decades which led to the meltdown was the fundamental ability to do the basics right. This was overlooked in the mad dash for super wealth.
I think governments should tax the bonuses, and if they go elsewhere say "good riddance to bad rubbish." These organisations are not what a society should have as its definition and standard for this whole mentality and attitude permeates to every part including the consequences which are inevitable of the failure of such a transaction based world where substance is ignored at best and misrepresented at worst.
Governments should take the view that if anyone is stupid enough to court the eventual disaster based upon short term profits from fraud, they should be allowed to have a go and find out the hard way.
Who was that financial swinger from Texas who conned English cricket landing at Lords and displaying $20 million and then went bust taking a Caribbean island with him? Just don't get on that roller coaster. It's not worth it for a society to predicate its foundation on that kind of life style.
"Investing not speculation," said Ben Graham echoed by his student Warren Buffett in the former's book "The Intelligent Investor." That's what it is all about. Stick with the basics and get things right so that they stay that way for the benefit of everyone in a society throughout life.
This government went whole hog into the casino society quite literally by trying to bring super casinos into the UK which have been scrapped. What productivity is there in super casinos, and what misery do they cause because the house always wins? This is very expensive and damaging "entertainment." What else can it possibly be? A momentary feeling of exultation that disappears as quickly as it appeared which needs to be generated again.
Before I wrote the above paragraph I heard: "Entertaining," from a surveillance male talking about what I was writing using this against me in a most abusive manner reflecting the trickle down effect of the transaction society whose benefit is only the momentary gratification that must be repeated over and over which always and inevitably leads to a collapse. In this case it is perpetual sadistic, torture abuse.
This whole problem has to be cleaned up, and this Labour Party government will never do that job. They were like kids let loose in a candy store of power where they could do as they pleased, and now we are all suffering the consequences especially me since the 11.25 years of indefinite surveillance technology torture abuse is still being carried out 24/7/365 by this government who will not stop it. It is those in government who just don't get it and haven't a clue.
In the mid-1970s Ben Graham, also known in the US as the Father of Security Analysis, said in a speech "Honesty is the best policy." He further noted that there were fundamental failures in the early 1970s that needed to be corrected.
["But whatever path you follow as financial analysts, hold on to your moral and intellectual integrity. Wall Street in the past decade fell far short of its once-praiseworthy ethical standards, to the great detriment of the public it serves and of the financial community itself." ("Barron's," Editorial Commentary "Renaissance of Value," 22 Sep 1974, p 7: excerpts from a talk by Benjamin Graham before the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts a week earlier.)]
That has never happened, and for the most part those of us who have lived honest, decent lives have fallen by the wayside as the criminals took the equity markets to huge heights based upon transactions, risk management that ultimately became the market's risk and not fundamentals.
The whole process of defining what is important, self fulfilling and worthwhile overall in society needs to be addressed and re-asserted, otherwise a complete economic meltdown and probably a planetary climate change debacle will do it for us leaving no choice.
I was sacked from my pension fund management job in 1982 because I wrote a long dissertation on the problems of management backed by extensive evidence over a three-year period. While I had done well, I could see that the system would not sustain it.
I then took on a reputed organised crime type who owned the building where I lived in the 1980s. Such fraud that I uncovered and the threat to people's lives which resulted from deliberate under management could never form the foundation of a viable society and had to be addressed to stop it.
For over 11 years now since 1998 I've been taking on the same problems which have all been wrapped up together where I live reflecting management abuse by under management, government abuse by its failures and the foundation of society based upon the fraudulent and indefinite use of surveillance technology to cover up and hide these crimes carried out even now in the hopes of criminal success.
There is where the real danger to society rests. No one still [addresses] the fundamental problems when they are right in front of them.
It's not just the bankers who "don't get it." It's a large segment of the population led by a corrupt government and civil service protecting itself rather than doing a proper job.
The whole ethos of society has to change if the UK is to recover and continue as a viable nation. The same applies to the world as well.
"I thought you said he was an 'actor'," asked a surveillance male after I finished the above Email. Lt Harry Bird USMC Ret and [BS] seek only to portray everything as negative since they are fabricating it all themselves while putting on a performance. I have a track record of doing and achievement which they do not.
They are parasites with surveillance technology seeking to misrepresent and mislead everyone especially when no one can see what they claim exists. They seek to get someone to act precipitously to destroy the evidence which supports all that I describe. They reflect one more fraud still in progress which has been and is enormously damaging to this country and its people
especially those in this community.
This is a fraud now of over eleven years duration the government can but will not stop. There's your real problem.
Gary
cc The Rt Hon David Cameron, MP, Leader Conservative Party
The Rt Hon Nick Clegg, MP, Leader Liberal Democrat Party
Councillor Merrick Cockell, Leader, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea
The Hon Karen Buck, MP, Regent's Park and North Kensington; Member: Home Affairs Select Committee
