The B-word sums up everything most people have come to hate about the financial industry. The Bonus Culture is convenient shorthand for what has gone wrong in the markets. When people try to find out just how the great catastrophe of the past two years could have happened, they focus on huge risks being taken for huge bonuses. When Congress wants to punish Wall Street, it threatens to take the bonuses away from the people who work there. When the British government wants to show it is getting tough with the City it gets Sir David Walker to produce a report saying that bonuses should be dribbled out over years instead of being paid all at once. When commentators want to say how banks should be run they warn of a huge gap between the interests of the shareholders and the managers as if financial companies were unique in having absentee owners (in fact they are far less absentee than in most industries because so much compensation is paid in shares that large chunks of these firms are owned by their employees.)
獎金一詞集合了大多數人對金融業的各種不滿。人們信手拿過獎金文化這個詞，以概括市場中出現的問題。當人們試圖找出過去兩年大災難發生的原因時，他們聚焦于巨額獎金帶來的巨大風險。當美國國會希望懲罰華爾街時，他們威脅要拿走華爾街員工的獎金。當英國政府希望展現對倫敦金融城的強硬立場時，他們讓大衛?沃克爵士(Sir David Walker)撰寫了一份報告，宣稱獎金應逐年發放，而不是一次性支付。當評論員希望就銀行的經營方式發表評論時，他們對股東和經理人之間巨大的利益鴻溝提出了警告，就好像只有金融企業才有虛位的所有者（實際上金融企業所有者虛位的情況遠比其它行業輕得多，因為大量報酬是以股份形式支付的，以至于這些公司有很大一部分歸員工所有）。