Just So

How now, Best Beloved? Are you too old for a plain tale? From these or other hills? Just so. This is the story of how the Banker got his bonus. What's that? No, we are older now, and far from the great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo. There are no elephants in this story, Best Beloved. Although there are bulls and bears: and, perhaps, a few greedy sharks.

Beside another river, the damned, dull, dank, dingy Thames, there is a place where all manner of things are done and not done. It is a wharf, though no vessel pulls up. Except, perhaps, the Ship of Fools. They named this wharf after a bird, a yellow bird. A canary, although if there be a single canary there, it failed to warn of the danger in the gold mine. The bulls and the bears still lived in the City; but the bankers had moved to the Wharf. They built their towers and hid their secrets in them.

One day, across the great water, an American Banker discovered a new instrument. It played no tune, unless it was the the one that the Piper of Hameln played. It was a Complex Debt Obligation: a financial instrument. The only instrument which produces more wailing than the legendary bagpipes of the Scottish Regiments, Best Beloved. It was complex, for no-one but the bankers understood it, it was debt, which everyone thought they understood, and it was an obligation – although in the end no-one felt obliged to pay the debt.

The Bankers across the water sold the instrument to the Bankers on the Wharf. Big Bankers sold the instrument to Small Bankers.

Can you imagine, Best Beloved? The debt was complex, because it was difficult: difficult to collect! Each time it was sold, it became more expensive, for no-one felt obliged to honour it.

But in the fullness of time, people heard the cracked voice of the instrument for what it was. The high and the mighty wisely spent the people's money on honouring the debt. And on the promise to pay the Bankers' Bonus.

Good night, Best Beloved.