Post by northwestman on Mar 5, 2024 19:47:49 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/banker-budget-mega-rich-traders-jeremy-hunt
In 2011, I placed a bet. It was a bet that the hundreds of billions of pounds of economic stimulus being poured into the UK and US economies would not reach the people who needed it. It would settle in the pockets of the richest, who would use it to buy the homes of the poor, and the economy would never recover. That year, I was Citibank’s most profitable trader in the world. They paid me $2m and asked me to do it again. It was around about then I realised the whole economic system wasn’t working.
Traders do not care about the budget, because the budget is not for traders and the budget is not about the economy. The budget is a piece of theatre meant for your consumption. It is a cute moment – a photogenic moment where a multimillionaire can hold up a red box and bribe you with a bit of your money, while they and all the other multimillionaires bankrupt the government with monetary and fiscal stimulus packages that seem somehow to always end up in their own pockets. They then use that money to buy assets such as all the houses that your children will need but never be able to afford to own.
And the traders, traders like me, we sit in skyscrapers and we laugh. Because we know that Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak, who are multimillionaires just like we are, will never tax us. We know that we will get richer and you will get poorer, and our lives will get better, and yours will get worse year after year after year. And each of us are paid millions of pounds every year to bet on it. To bet on it, instead of telling you.
Alas, never a truer word. The biggest problem of all is the ever widening gap between the top 5% of earners in the population and the rest of us.
In 2011, I placed a bet. It was a bet that the hundreds of billions of pounds of economic stimulus being poured into the UK and US economies would not reach the people who needed it. It would settle in the pockets of the richest, who would use it to buy the homes of the poor, and the economy would never recover. That year, I was Citibank’s most profitable trader in the world. They paid me $2m and asked me to do it again. It was around about then I realised the whole economic system wasn’t working.
Traders do not care about the budget, because the budget is not for traders and the budget is not about the economy. The budget is a piece of theatre meant for your consumption. It is a cute moment – a photogenic moment where a multimillionaire can hold up a red box and bribe you with a bit of your money, while they and all the other multimillionaires bankrupt the government with monetary and fiscal stimulus packages that seem somehow to always end up in their own pockets. They then use that money to buy assets such as all the houses that your children will need but never be able to afford to own.
And the traders, traders like me, we sit in skyscrapers and we laugh. Because we know that Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak, who are multimillionaires just like we are, will never tax us. We know that we will get richer and you will get poorer, and our lives will get better, and yours will get worse year after year after year. And each of us are paid millions of pounds every year to bet on it. To bet on it, instead of telling you.
Alas, never a truer word. The biggest problem of all is the ever widening gap between the top 5% of earners in the population and the rest of us.