Watch Out Wall Street, Here Come the Dutch!

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Watch Out Wall Street,
Here Come the Dutch!
All the big banks in the Netherlands, pressed on by the Dutch finance minister, have agreed on a serious plan to restrain banker bonuses. And now the Dutch want the rest of the world to sign on.

September 14, 2009
By Sam Pizzigati


Remember that fabled Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dike and saved family and friends from a ravaging flood? That wonderful tale turns out to be a flight of fancy from a 19th century American novelist who never ever set foot in tulip land. But now a real-life Dutchman is trying to trump that mythic Dutch boy and save the world from a menacing new flood — of banker bonus cash.

Dutch finance minister Wouter Bos last week announced a deal that will limit Dutch banker bonuses to no more than one year’s salary. Next week he’ll be taking that deal to Pittsburgh, where the leaders of the world’s 20 most important economies will be debating possible curbs on the banker pay incentives that one year ago nearly deep-sixed the entire global economy.

The Dutch won’t be the only players in Pittsburgh seeking to rein in excessive financial industry pay. The French and the Germans are talking tough, too. But all these Europeans face a determined opposition — mainly from American and British officials, who seem content, even eager, to let banker pay settle back to business as usual.

And that could prove catastrophic. Bonus business as usual could trigger the same sort of banker recklessness that so devastated the world economy in 2008.

“It's obvious we're setting ourselves up for a repeat,” Sarah Anderson of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies noted last week. “If people can still make loads of money on investments that blow up a year later, where is the disincentive for doing it all over again?”

The new Dutch bank pay deal aims to avert that repeat. Banks in the Netherlands, under pressure from finance minister Bos, have agreed to “implement a meticulous, restrained and long-term” approach to compensation that takes into account both bank financial self-interest and Dutch public opinion, or “society’s acceptance,” as the new Dutch banking code puts it. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/sept14a.html

"Buy tulips, Buy tulips!"

If not for innovations in Dutch finance, settlement of the North American continent would have proceeded much differently.

They were powerful and then lost superiority in the region. Now they seem to be taking the lead in an area of finance after centuries of not being in control.

My response was going back to the subject header of this thread. Seemed ironic, things coming full circle. My observation came from being a native New Yorker and remembering history studies about my home city. Hope this helps because that's all it was.

:hi:

exploration 400 yrs ago. ;)

BTW...my town is an original Dutch settlement north of Manhattan.

Just returned from my kid's "Back-to-School Night." Two parents were excited, discussing the prospect of applying for a $10 an hour P-T job. Unbelievable. This is Detroit, where the middle class was born...

You know the story, marmar.

Then they are accomplishing nothing but putting a facade on the problems.

But then, I have a general aversion to corporate fascist pig psychopaths. I know it's an unreasonable prejudice, but I just haven't been able to cure myself of it.