RBS received a total of £33 billion of tax payers money to prop it up and AIG has received a staggering (to use Robert Peston's favourite adjective) $170 billion.
Now Sir Fred Goodwin, who seems to be the devil incarnate if you follow the press, received a pension pot of £16 million, and the senior executives of AIG got a total of $165 million in bonuses.
All the newspapers, TV news, pundits and commentators are literally (in the case of Robert Peston) foaming at the mouth: "Scandalous! That's tax payers money being thrown away - GRRR!"
The problem is that the worlds Million and Billion sound so similar, but are in reality so different.
Lets look at the figures:
RBS got £33,000,000,000 and Sir Fred got £16,000,000. In terms of a percentage Sir Fred's pension is
| £16,000,000 |
| £33,000,000,000 |
| 1 |
| 2,000 |
AIG got $170,000,000,000 and the executives got $165,000,000. That's
| $165,000,000 |
| $170,000,000,000 |
| 1 |
| 1,000 |
It is like giving a down-and-out a £10 note and then complaining when he gives a his dog a penny chew!
What I am far more interested in is
(a) what is happening to the 99.9%
(b) where all this money came from and how the government is going to pay for it.
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2 comments:
Were you inspired by xkcd?
He was ahead of you
No... but I'm not surprised that someone else noted the stupidity of the press...
"Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ"
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