Lord Griffiths has echoed the ‘Greed is good’ maxim by Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street, by saying inequality is good
Inequality is good, says Goldman chief, echoing Gordon Gekko as he defends huge bank bonuses
By Rupert Steiner
The vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs has launched an astonishing defence of bumper bonuses just a year after bankers brought the world’s economy to the brink of collapse.
In a speech likely to recall fictional banker Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street – whose mantra ‘greed is good’ came to sum up the excesses of the 1980s – Lord Griffiths claimed taxpayers should ‘tolerate the inequality’.
And he insisted that banks should not be ashamed of rewarding staff.
His comments came as it was revealed that President Barack Obama is set to slash bonus payouts by as much as 90 per cent to executives at Wall Street banks that received billions of dollars in taxpayers’ cash.
Last week, Goldman Sachs provoked anger after revealing that it planned to lavish a record £13.4billion in pay and bonuses on its staff.
Around 5,500 of its employees work in London and are in line to pocket an average of £440,000 each after the bank revealed a sharp rise in profits.
Lord Griffiths, who was speaking at a debate on ethics held at St Paul’s Cathedral, said: ‘We have to accept that inequality is a way of achieving greater opportunity and prosperity for all.
‘We should not be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market to ensure that businesses stay here and employ British people.’
The 67-year- old, a former adviser to Lady Thatcher, also said government attempts to rein in bonuses would only result in banks quitting Britain, causing huge damage to the economy.
‘We should think about the mediumterm common good and make sure that going forward we have one cluster of industry here in London – the financial sector,’ he said.
Lord Griffiths’s comments will be a major embarrassment for Chancellor Alistair Darling and Treasury minister Lord Myners, who have already promised to slam the brakes on corporate excesses.
They are also likely to enrage millions of credit-starved businesses and families hit by the credit crunch.
2 responses so far ↓
Anthony // October 22, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I initially became upset after reading his statement. Once I was forced to think about it, I understood that he was simply reflecting what Capitalism is (a system based on inequality). The truth can be very upsetting, but it is still truth. Capitalism could never be an equal system. Unfortunately, Capitalism and equality can not exist within the same ideology; Capitalism and equality are opposing thoughts.
pjwalker911 // October 22, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Monopoly Capitalism isn’t Free Market. There can be no real Free Market in a Capitalist society run by an elite aristocracy that controls governments and the media, that are all interbred with royalty like Lord Griffiths, Lord Rothschild and so on. The elite are the elite because they conspire to maintain their power through criminal manipulation of markets and governments, and everything else, toward their New World Order. In a truly Free Market economy with a fair playing field, this would not happen. There would be no favoritism. If a business failed to serve its customers properly, it would fail, not be bailed out or saved.
There would be some inequality in a truly Free Market, but not anywhere near the vast chasm that separates the aristocracy from the commoner today. Crony Capitalism is an elite club, a rigged form of feudalism that keeps the majority impoverished and surviving week to week, hand to mouth under immense pressure to pay the mounting bills, taxes, fees and debts to creditors who are the elite bankers like Lord Griffiths. It is therefore, Debt Slavery in which the average person can barely keep his head above water.
The elites and their businesses are favored by governments in a type of Revolving Door Corporate Socialism where big business and banking profiteers are literally paid by the taxpayer to make war and poisonous substances like vaccines and drugs that are part of the elites’ eugenics program.
The multi-trillion dollar bailouts and bonus scams only highlight and add to these facts. It is grand theft, pure and simple.