Nothing is more cowardly than a million dollars, it is sometimes said. But where can a hounded money man run scared to? The war on greed is going global. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, plans to follow the UK example with a one-off tax on bankers' bonuses. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, calls it “a charming idea”. In the US, Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury department's pay tsar, wants to clamp down on salaries at companies that received state help. Even Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric's chief executive, has rounded on executive “meanness and greed”. The UK government, having “saved the world” at the start of the banking crisis, is now leading the way in whipping its bankers.
Some London-based bankers, furious at the windfall tax, will doubtless still move, although the idea that a whole industry can decamp to an Alpine tax haven is absurd. Client meetings remain local. Large swathes of the industry need the City's soft infrastructure of lawyers, accountants and other networks. There is also London's time zone. The rise of the Brics, their deep wells of money and lighter regulation will inevitably see London lose some of its pre-eminence. But that is a slow process, the work of years, not a snap decision.
Some bankers, poor darlings, feel persecuted by the baying mob. Indeed an inflated sense of entitlement is a failing common to much of the public too. In the UK, interest rate cuts since the start of the crisis have delivered the average £103,000 floating rate mortgage holder an annual saving of £4,635. Against that, the government estimates the net cost of bailing out the financial system at £10bn, or £400 per household. For many, the crisis has also handed them a windfall. Just like the bankers they love to loathe, few see it that way.