Thursday 4 March 2021

Debt and bankers` bonuses

The Jubilee Debt Campaign is absolutely right to say that the British government should be doing more to force UK banks to "alleviate the new developing country debt crisis" (UK urged to help ease debt crisis in developing countries, 22/02/21). With 30% of the debt owed to British banks, the chancellor should be doing more than "calling on private-sector creditors" to join the debt suspension scheme. Not only are these poor countries spending so much on interest payments, they cannot afford to run adequate health services, let alone purchase Covid vaccines, they owe to banks which last week published annual profits in the billions. The result is the banks pay staff massive bonuses which are surplus to very generous salaries rather than helping poor countries recover from the pandemic! When banks last faced criticism for paying obscene levels of pay and bonus, they justified their action by claiming they had to attract the "best people", and that banks were putting "ethics before profits" after the 2009 crash. Even if such policies ever existed, they certainly didn`t last very long!

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