The Centre for Economics and Business Research calculates that U.K. bankers alone have reaped more than 31 billion pounds in bonuses over the past four years.

That's GBP 31,000,000,000. Personal pay. On top of salary.

With no personal risk. And no personal financial investment. In 48 months.

I find it difficult regard this amount of money arriving in bankers personal pockets in such a short time as other than a misappropriation of the assets of the non-banking community, whether legal or not. While technically legal, SIVs, derivatives, CDSs, the off balance sheet charade, and the blind eyes willfully turned to risk management have purposely made a farce of moral hazard and regulation. Regulation that was not the enemy of so called free enterprise, but regulation that was put in place on behalf of society to stop the very things that have happened and to provide stability to a system on which all of us are dependant.

Each and every one of us (and that will include our children) is being forced through taxes to recapitalise banks which are crippled in part because so much cash has been taken out by the people who work(ed) there, and in part because the so called assets created by the bankers (paid commission up front) turn out suddenly to actually be worth pence in the pound.

I deeply resent the economic carnage and personal pain this has caused, and will continue to cause to the people around me and the country I live in. And it is utterly galling that in such a short time many bankers have become rich forever on the proceeds of the very deals we are all having to pay for now.

It is time as a society to decide whether we will tolerate inactively such pain for the many for the excesses of so few. Excesses made in breach of the spirit, if not the letter, of regulation and fiduciary duties owed. It is time to decide whether these same bankers should be publicly shamed or legislated into returning at least a proportion of enormous amount of money extracted up front from deals which have proven cataclysmic for everyone else.

I suggest a six year retrospective tax hike to 50 per cent on all bonuses up to GBP 2 million, and 75 per cent over that. Fair? After all, we are all being asked to retrospectively pay for these excessive bonuses by government borrowing on our behalf to get capital back into the banks.

from here