Royal Bank insanity - and we put up with it!!

Too many surprising things are happening this week, but I can't stop myself on a few topics.  I'm easily exceeding my normal daily quota of one surprise!  This evening's earlier post was scheduled and I just forgot to reschedule it!  Never mind.

Today's news about the Royal Bank of Scotland making a loss of a 'mere' £1.13 billion comes as something of a surprise.  Even I can tell them how to reduce that loss to about £63 million at a stroke.  Wasn't it only about two weeks ago that RBS promised not to pay out more than £950 million in bonuses to its staff?

Well, as a government employee, taxpayer (and therefore shareholder in RBS), and normal person with a little common sense, I say that we need some better bankers who will return a profit for us.  Paying bonuses for this poor performance is simply encouraging failure.  When the bank makes a profit again it can pay bonuses.  Meanwhile the money is OURS.

The 1 million other people employed by the government will get no incentives - what makes RBS so special?

Trying to see the bright side . . . I think they might be in the same mindset as the now defunct Panam airline, who are said to have been the only state airline never to make a loss.  They made a negative profit!