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.)
奖金一词集合了大多数人对金融业的各种不满。人们信手拿过奖金文化这个词，以概括市场中出现的问题。当人们试图找出过去两年大灾难发生的原因时，他们聚焦于巨额奖金带来的巨大风险。当美国国会希望惩罚华尔街时，他们威胁要拿走华尔街员工的奖金。当英国政府希望展现对伦敦金融城的强硬立场时，他们让大卫•沃克爵士(Sir David Walker)撰写了一份报告，宣称奖金应逐年发放，而不是一次性支付。当评论员希望就银行的经营方式发表评论时，他们对股东和经理人之间巨大的利益鸿沟提出了警告，就好像只有金融企业才有虚位的所有者（实际上金融企业所有者虚位的情况远比其它行业轻得多，因为大量报酬是以股份形式支付的，以至于这些公司有很大一部分归员工所有）。