Folk Slinging

The American taxpayers are still gasping, choking actually, on the bonus structures being doled out to Wall Street bankers under the guise of “this-is-simply-the-way-we-pay-people-and-how-we-keep-our-best-and-brightest-so-we-can-compete” payroll policy. AIG’s up for another round - $100 million! It’s certainly galling to have bailed out many of these mega-hogs, provided them with virtually free loans so that they could free up the credit market (instead, they invested on their own account) and guaranteed their insurance company which was covering some of their biggest lending losses… but if you think we’re angry, there are a lot of taxpayers boiling over in not-so-jolly-olde England – a country whose economic problems dwarf even our own.

You see, the Royal Bank of Scotland would’ve been “kilt” (I’m sorry) if U.K. taxpayers had not bailed out this teetering token of terrible trading with a $74 billion infusion of capital, making the British government the 84% owner of this “too big to fail” failure. So effectively, British taxpayers own and control RBS. You see, this 300-year-olde bank is about to pay out a staggering $2.4 billion in bonuses, even as the average Brit is pinned down by horrid economic times. While the U.S. government may effectively control carmakers like GM and Chrysler, these once-proud manufacturing behemoths have never embraced a system of mega-bonuses as how they compensate the senior managers. So the U.S. government simply does not have a comparable ownership/control situation like that of the U.K. and RBS.

It seems that a gaggle of generally groaning gentlefolk – U.K. taxpayers to be sure – are not letting this phenomenon pass without protest. A prominent local folk singer, 53-year-old Billy Bragg (known for his musical collaborations with the likes of Natalie Merchant, R.E.M and Wilco), has launched a Facebook page (NoBonus4RBS) and a Webpage (www.NoBonus4RBS.co.uk) that present a form letter that can be sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British IRS) saying that the sender/U.K.-taxpayer is withholding paying taxes until the British government “exercise[s] our shareholders veto and limit all bonuses that RBS pays to employees to no more than £25,000 [$41,000].” The Facebook page has already signed up over 20,000.

The January 25^th DailyFinance.com reports: “Bragg has certainly hit a nerve with the public. With many Brits struggling to make ends meet, unemployment at 7.9% and a record banker bonus season just around the corner, every reference to RBS payouts feels like a slap in the face. Bragg has provided links to videos like the televised address by RBS Chief Executive Stephen Hester to Treasury Select Committee, during which he admitted, ‘If you asked my mother and father about my pay they would say it's too high.’” Oh, by the way, Hester himself is scheduled to receive a bonus package worth £9.7 million.

The U.K. and France have recently imposed a 50% tax on such bonus packages to the extent they exceed £25,000 ($41,000), but Braggs, active in controversial issues for decades, wants that number to be a cap. Interesting thought, a taxpayer revolt, but the notion of applying what Bragg openly calls “Anarchy in the UK” to the American system... the picture of the IRS’ prosecuting thousands of tax “evaders,” crowding the courts, maybe even costing taxpayers more to cover the cost of incarceration just to ensure that fat cats stay fat... is a very amusing visual. Seeing the steam coming out of U.K. and U.S. taxpayers’ ears alike isn’t, however, so pretty.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought you’d like to see how others are reacting to excess.