More on Bank Executive Pay

The comedy of errors continues.

From a recent Irish Times article by the forensic and understated Colm Keena: “Lenihan said he was going to seek a cap of 500,000 euro on the salaries of the chief executives of Bank of Ireland and AIB… When the then governor of the Bank of Ireland wrote to Lenihan about Boucher’s pay arrangements, he suggested pay of 500,000 euro and a “pension cash allowance” of 123,000 euro. The Minister did not want the new chief executive getting any allowance that had been criticised in the (Covered Institution Remuneration Oversight) Committee report, and the amount ended up being rolled into a salary of 623,000 euro. Ironically, this appears to have been an improvement in Boucher’s terms, as the salary amount is pensionable, while the cash allowance is not”.

14 replies on “More on Bank Executive Pay”

“I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. … You are a den of vipers and thieves.”
– Andrew Jackson in 1834 on closing the Second Bank of the United States.

Nothing new under the sun…

@All
It’s been a few weeks now since the arrests. We were told that more were imminent. As with the EU Commission, I prefer to believe the Gardai do not engage in stunts.

“The former chief executive of the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing has been arrested, authorities say.

Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson is suspected of embezzlement, trading irregularities, and other breaches of banking laws, the special prosecutor’s office has said.

It is the first high-profile arrest since the country’s financial collapse in 2008.

Mr Sigurdsson is being held by police until a bail hearing on Friday at the Reykjavik District Court.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is carrying out its own investigation into suspected fraud at Kaupthing, with a focus on the bank’s efforts to attract British investors to its “high yield” deposit account, Kaupthing Edge.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8665880.stm
Courtesy of poster Sync on another forum.

@All
“The organisation representing credit unions has said that it invested just €99 million in Anglo Irish Bank bonds, and has called on the government to ‘‘cease referring to these investments as justification for guarantees and the continuation of Anglo Irish Bank’’.

Brennan said it was ‘‘unfortunate’’ that the credit unions were being used ‘‘to justify arguments for government support for financial institutions’’.

Ministers and TDs have repeatedly suggested that credit unions hold significant sums in Anglo bonds.”

It gets worse…
“There is no information on the identity of the Anglo bondholders, and finance sources say that, because the bonds are tradeable, there is no way of tracking who holds them.”
http://www.thepost.ie/story/eyidideycw/
(Courtesy of poster on The Property Pin.)
Surely we can all agree that our crooked establishment deserve jail?

Surely we can all agree that our crooked establishment deserve jail?

“Justice is open to everyone in the same way as the Ritz Hotel.” – Judge Sturgess, 1928.

“Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.” – Pierre Joseph Proudhon, quoted in The Match!

Anon poster(s) above

Hmmmmmm. Agreed, but in the real world?

OP
That sort of error is irony writ large and a snub. Civil servants are very conscious of what is pensionable ….. these days even more so. Anything to distract from the main issue. Prestidigitation like this shows that something big is coming?

Pay is a very small issue compared to Ireland borrowing 100,000,000,000 euro as a result of mismanagement of a booming healthy economy.

Leaks like this are of no real account?

@George Orwell
Watch out, Andrew Jackson is a “dead man” and we can not learn anything from them now. He couldn’t possible be speaking for the peasants. 😉

Oh know, He was a John Knox Calvinist!… That means he was Augustinian. He also had Irish ties… Watch out St Patrick!

“Andrew Jackson was born to Presbyterian Scotch-Irish colonists Andrew and Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, on March 15, 1767, approximately two years after they had emigrated from Ireland.[4][5] Jackson’s father, Andrew Jackson, Sr., was born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in Ireland around 1738.[6] He married Elizabeth, sold his land and emigrated to America in 1765.”

I have been to his home in Tennessee, yes I like history. He was an apt man.

Features of a banana republic
…The profits can be privatized and the debts socialized.

Devalued paper currency in the international community.

Kleptocracy — those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it.

There must be no principle of accountability within the government so that the political corruption by which the banana republic operates is left unchecked. The members of the national legislature will be (a) largely for sale and (b) consulted only for ceremonial and rubber-stamp purposes some time after all the truly important decisions have already been made elsewhere.

…a money class fleeces the banking system while the very trunk of the national tree is permitted to rot and crash…
—Christopher Hitchens[8]

@George Orwell
There are massive double standards at work:
Default = Elites say, “EVIL, Unthinkable.”
Being ruined so we are facing default = Elites say, “We are where we are”, for the Greek people as much as the Irish people.

The world needs to: hold lenders as much responsible as borrowers; stop terrorising about default and start speaking calmly of restructuring;
end financial gambling which is generating an escalating fearing frenzy;
focus accountability on elites not the public; stop bubbles.

Our establishment have created a warped public sphere where they are responsible only for anything good that happens and angrily refute responsibility for everything bad, instead saying “WE” were collectively responsible. They demand respect on the basis of the offices they hold, milk the accompanying perks for all they are worth and then contemptuously disdain any accountability. They want to be the government in good times but just average citizens when their recklessness and cronyism bears bitter fruit.
Collective Responsibility = NO Accountability, for the Greeks as much as ourselves.

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