Not since Shylock demanded a pound of flesh has the banking sector faced the level of hatred and derision that it does today. Millionaire bankers are solely responsible for the economic crisis, got bailed out by government and are now paying themselves outrageous bonuses, goes the current narrative. Shock, horror and political opportunism have predictably ensued.
U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed slapping a punitive tax against the banks that will come to $117-billion over the next ten years. The tax has been dismissed as "a populist, punitive and unfairly distributed political manoeuvre" by some and the banking industry is considering taking the government to court to challenge the constitutionality of the measures.
And yet I have no doubt the measure will prove popular with voters and will at least help stop the bleeding in Obama's terrible approval numbers.
In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has imposed a special 50 per cent tax on banker bonuses above £25,000 that some critics have suggested will lead 9,000 bankers to relocate abroad.
In post-recession times, this is the cheapest, easiest of politics. Find a villain, blame the villain for all that went wrong, take a giant stick, swing wildly at said villain repeatedly hoping the flogging helps distract the public from the real policy and political problems facing a leader.
Long time readers will know that I subscribed a long time ago to a philosophy that originates with the ancient Greeks that "when everyone is zigging, zag." It's complex and deep but it has served me well. Luckily from time to time, our political leaders follow this ancient maxim
This past November, a remarkable thing happened in Canada. Despite the fact that bankers are reviled in almost every other country in the world at the moment, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and leaders from the Canadian financial services sector got together to talk about how to - get this - take advantage of our relatively healthy financial services sector and create more jobs and wealth for Canadians. Rather than using evil bankers as a cheap political piñata, the Premier, bank and other financial sector CEOs, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan (who launched the process in conjunction with the bank CEOs) and Toronto Mayor David Miller discussed a goal of "growing (the) Toronto Region to become one of the two leading financial clusters in North America and one of the top ten global hubs."
This wasn't just an idle round table followed with some bar-mitzvah style party sandwiches. By the time the round table met in November, they were responding to a working paper prepared by Boston Consulting Group that set out a plan with "four priority opportunities that have the potential to drive a projected incremental 25,000-40,000 jobs and $4-billion - $5-billion in annual GDP over a five-year time horizon."
My understanding is work continues at all levels of government to help implement this aggressive, ambitious goal.
Given the relative health of the Canadian financial sector, there is may be a once-in a generation opportunity for Canada to take advantage of the relative poor health of many of our foreign competitor's financial sectors. If other banks are being driven out of London or New York because of politically driven tax policy, we should throw our doors open to welcome them here. The fact that our politicians are working with business to make this happen instead of scoring cheap political points like Obama and Brown are should be encouraging to all of us.
(Photo: Top executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America testify before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington last week. AFP/Getty Images)