An apology to 98% of bankers

After the banking leaders apologies in government hearings, I think I also have to apologise to my friends in the banking industry.  The apology is for the fact that many of us have spent months now writing stinking anecdotes about bankers, the banking system and how rotten some of it is.

All of this acrimony is directed specifically at a very small group in the
investment community, and not the wider community as a whole.

The apology is to all those folks in the banks who are just hard working people delivering reliable results. The operational, technology services, customer services, administration, processing, branch and related resources who are dedicated individuals doing a good job, just as they have been for the past years or, in some cases, decades.

These folks did nothing wrong and have been tarnished with the brush of the few.

Equally, I am personally passionate about banking which is why I blog about it so much. The reason for my passion is that I grew up with various interests, although technology and money rose to the fore can banking allows me to enjoy those two interests to their fullest extent.

And the banking system is not broken. Everything is still being cleared and settled. Payments transactions are still being processed. Trades are still being executed and customers are still receiving good services.

So I apologise to all who are suffering this never-ending media managed system that paints a picture whereby all bankers are criminals.

It’s not all bankers.

It’s just a few.

A few who created products that they thought were appropriate but were riddled with risks.

Those risks have now manifested themselves in the worst possible manner.

And there are also a few who, like Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, are just money-grabbing, selfish, ruthless, greedy bastards.

Let’s hope that they are the ones flushed out of this system so that it can be cleansed again, and the thousands of good, hard-working folks who are dedicated and conscientious can continue to be recognised as such, instead of the way that the never-ending press commentary appears to place them in the same box as the Gekko’s of this world.