Let them eat cake

From The Guardian:

Bankers rage at G20 “witch hunt”

Bankers and hedge fund managers were furious yesterday at attempts by the G20 to cap their pay and regulate them for the first time, calling it a “witch hunt” by world leaders.

“Regulation is generally bad. You should let the market decide what the people will get paid,” said Matthew Prest, managing director at Close Brothers investment bank. “Sometimes regulation has the opposite effect of what you want and I think bankers’ salaries regulation would fall under that category. I don’t hear anybody calling for Hollywood star salary caps. This is a trendy, fashionable thing to do, it will have bad consequences.”

The m****r-f*****g bastards are upset??? Why don’t they just say “Let them eat cake” and get it over with?

These f**ksticks are obviously so far removed from the rest of us that they have no clue how enraged we are.  People aren’t peeved or miffed, they are apoplectic with fury.  Normally law-abiding citizens are seriously talking about violence – and others just nod their heads in agreement.  The last time people were this pissed off we invaded a couple countries.

Serenity now! Serenity now!

Compare and contrast:

Teddy Roosevelt:

Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses —whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type, and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the country.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

Barack Obama:

I, I, would say that, er … if you look at … the, the sources of this crisis … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system … I think what is also true is that … here in Great Britain … … here in continental Europe … around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er … the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged … . So at this point, I’m less interested in … identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalized, er, dealing with the enormous, er … drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there’s a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what’s the risk involved, what’s the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think … there’s enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er … I’m a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.

From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

We needed a hero.  We got a ZERO.