Bonuses: will bankers go abroad if bonuses are cut?

The fact that Government ministers talk and do nothing about bankers bonuses shows that the banksters have more power than the elected leaders of the people.

Or that they are all in it together with the banksters.

Or they lack the brains to counter the arguments made by bankers.

The regular excuse/reason given for bonuses is that if the City does not pay bonuses, the "best people" (i.e. the numpties who brought the world's banking system to the very brink of meltdown in 2008) will up sticks and go somewhere where their skills are justly rewarded.

What this excuse overlooks is that the only place for them to go is Wall Street, because it is the Anglo-American banksters who lead the world in unregulated greed. And in fact, Obama is inclined to be tougher on the idiots than the pusillanimous Cameron, who is all mouth about the wrongness of the bonus awards, but is severely lacking in the trouser department.

All it takes is a bit of coordinated action between the US and UK to curb the excesses of the greedsters, and we could be sorted. But no, because both countries are hot-beds of free market fundamentalist fanatics.

The other unspoken aspect of the bonus culture is that bonuses are paid in recognition for individual effort, as opposed to corporate teamwork, and therefore if a bonus recipient (for example, Fred Goodwin) fouls up and lands his company (e.g. RBS) with billions of pounds worth of debt, he should be made bankrupt, thus annihilating at least a proportion of the debt.