Update: at Ace a comment asks:
What happens when the teleprompter calls at 3am and needs a cuddle?
Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.That's Barney Frank on the high stool, bottom right, dreaming of a windfall tax on Big Oil.
Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.
There were fears that the public backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m (€122m) in bonuses, which followed the US insurer’s taxpayer-funded rescue, would have devastating consequences for the country’s largest banks.
“Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it,” said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. “This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG.”
The banker added: “This is like Russia 15 years ago. It’s like a McCarthy witch-hunt . . . This is the most profoundly anti-American thing I’ve ever seen.”