"I'm proud to say, I was once a banker. Well, a bank clerk. Jobs were hard to come by in the Ireland of the Sixties, and clerking in the bank was none too shabby a start for a fresh-faced eejit just out of school.
It was either that or insurance, if you didn't want to emigrate, or spend what was left of your parents' money pretending to study for a degree that, in the end, would mean you'd have to take the mail-boat to Holyhead anyway.
It wasn't easy, getting in. You had to pass an exam and do a month-long training course before you were deemed fit to face the public, and then it was still several years before you were allowed up from the basement, where you were allowed to sort files and lick postage stamps, to blink in the unaccustomed light and actually meet the customers. Lean, hungry years where you were paid a pittance.
For it was a privilege to work for the bank, and, conscious of the honour, your parents were expected to subsidise you. The triumvirate that ran many a small town were the parish priest, the police sergeant and the bank manager.
Bankers were respected, admired and even in some cases, quite liked, for their fairness and honesty. They served on committees and charities, they captained golf clubs, and were trusted with church collections.
You didn't have to be a brain-surgeon, banking was simple: you took in money from people who didn't want to hide it under the bed, put it in your big safe, and paid them interest. Then you loaned some of that money to people who needed it, at a higher rate of interest. You made a profit, paid your staff and your shareholders, and er, that was it. Books were balanced every quarter, and every year or so, inspectors would arrive to strike terror and make sure that no one was fiddling the books. We bankers were poor, but we were honest. So how did the old profession come to such a sorry pass?
Using customers' money to speculate like gamblers in a Las Vegas Casino, and losing so heavily that we, the taxpayers, have to bail them out to the tune of billions; welshing on the deal by consistently refusing to loan the money we've given them to small businesses, and then flying in the face of all decency by offering huge bonuses?
I hear that the more sensitive among them will avoid the stigma, by retrospectively upping some staff members' salaries to, say, last January. See, no bonus?!"
I used to be proud to say I was a banker.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7...-a-banker.html
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It was either that or insurance, if you didn't want to emigrate, or spend what was left of your parents' money pretending to study for a degree that, in the end, would mean you'd have to take the mail-boat to Holyhead anyway.
It wasn't easy, getting in. You had to pass an exam and do a month-long training course before you were deemed fit to face the public, and then it was still several years before you were allowed up from the basement, where you were allowed to sort files and lick postage stamps, to blink in the unaccustomed light and actually meet the customers. Lean, hungry years where you were paid a pittance.
For it was a privilege to work for the bank, and, conscious of the honour, your parents were expected to subsidise you. The triumvirate that ran many a small town were the parish priest, the police sergeant and the bank manager.
Bankers were respected, admired and even in some cases, quite liked, for their fairness and honesty. They served on committees and charities, they captained golf clubs, and were trusted with church collections.
You didn't have to be a brain-surgeon, banking was simple: you took in money from people who didn't want to hide it under the bed, put it in your big safe, and paid them interest. Then you loaned some of that money to people who needed it, at a higher rate of interest. You made a profit, paid your staff and your shareholders, and er, that was it. Books were balanced every quarter, and every year or so, inspectors would arrive to strike terror and make sure that no one was fiddling the books. We bankers were poor, but we were honest. So how did the old profession come to such a sorry pass?
Using customers' money to speculate like gamblers in a Las Vegas Casino, and losing so heavily that we, the taxpayers, have to bail them out to the tune of billions; welshing on the deal by consistently refusing to loan the money we've given them to small businesses, and then flying in the face of all decency by offering huge bonuses?
I hear that the more sensitive among them will avoid the stigma, by retrospectively upping some staff members' salaries to, say, last January. See, no bonus?!"
I used to be proud to say I was a banker.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7...-a-banker.html
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