My Berlin – Financial Crisis
Have you played Monopoly recently? Read the rules. In the English version, there is the question: “What happens if the Bank runs out of money?”
Answer: “The Bank never goes bankrupt. To continue playing using slips of paper to keep track of each player’s banking transactions – until the bank has enough paper money to operate again.”
The world’s leaders certainly know their Monopoly. But the sums they are throwing at banks look ridiculous even as play money.
One of my wisest decisions at school was never to take mathematics seriously. Astronomy yes, arithmetic no. The financial crisis has proved me right yet again. The United States recently announced a 700 billion dollar rescue plan for its banks. Why 700 billion? Why not, say 480 billion? Or 720 billion? A US Treasury spokeswoman confirmed my suspicions when she admitted: “We just wanted a really big number.” Well, that’s the kind of maths I understand. The same goes for the Hypo Real Estate, or hypno-bank as I prefer to call it: a rescue package of 50 billion euros agreed with the government; now it is first in line for 15 billion assistance and says it actually needs much more. Meanwhile I am having problems getting my bank to lend me a few thousand euro to pay a tax bill. The numbers business has gone mad. Even the Financial Times, the Bible, or perhaps the Kama Sutra of the banking world, seems to have been taken by surprise. Its quaintly named magazine “How to spend it” (spend what exactly?) was dedicated to advising bankers how to spend their bonuses. One suggestion – I am serious now – was a belt that automatically tightens or expands depending on whether you have eaten goulash and dumplings or have fasted for a day. It is called the Dunhill Mechanical belt and can be bought for 5,962 pounds. Ten days later, the same newspaper’s Agony Aunt (Sorgentante?) was asked by a banker whether he should lie about his profession at dinner parties. He ws tired of being insulted or ignored. One answer was: pretend you an unpublished novelist. You don’t get that kind of guidance from Bravo, believe me.
Bankers have become pariahs. Ordinary people have become spooked by the numbers. If you get your maths wrong in the classroom, you are punished. If you get your figures wrong in real life, you are helped out with money that comes from the taxes of people who actually pay attention to their bills. The bail-outs help only creditors not debtors; the banks not homeowners or companies. It takes two to create debt, but only one side is being helped. So, of course, people are angry with bankers. Björk, the strange Icelandic pop singer, said the other day that the bankers on her island have gone into hiding. It’s not quite that bad in Grunewald. Sometimes you see someone with a brown paper bag over his head climbing into a Mercedes C-Klasse and you think: Dresdner! Or: Commerzbank! But it doesn’t happen very often. Usually nowadays they take the S-Bahn. The S7 from Nikolassee – even in the old days this used to be known as the Bankierbahn – in varying degrees of camouflage. The other day I saw one with a surf board.
The real problems will start in May when – ok, if – Peter Sodann (or Kommissar Ehrlicher as he is more usually known) gets elected Bundespräsident. The actor is the candidate of the Linke. If there were a popular vote, he might well have won. Look at it this way: a Tatort-Kommissar watched by millions on Sunday nights backed by an anti-banker party, against Horst Köhler who made his name at the IMF, wining and dining bankers. Sadly, German presidential elections do not operate in this way. But if…if…if, then the kommissarische Bundespräsident would be personally putting handcuffs onto the wrists of bankers, an improvement perhaps on their present silver Rolexes. And naturally we would be reciting Brecht in Schloss Bellevue and eating Bouletten with Friederike in the banqueting hall rather than Lachstartar auf Rucola. Bankers boonuses would be used to set up soup kitchens.
Before it gets to that stage I would like to say: stop this hate campaign now! Do not marginalise the banking profession! Everyone deserves a second chance and there is no reason whatsoever that a banker cannot be useful to society. Prison, Herr Sodann, is not the answer for these often misunderstood people. Current estimates are that there will be 250,000 people unemployed from the European banking sector by this time next year. A quarter of a million: at a time when more and more households need childcare, sensibly priced cleaners, Pflegepersonal. Give these men – I’m afraid most of them are men; this financial crisis seems to be connected with excess testosterone – new opportunities. They can be trained to change the sheet of elderly Tante Elfriede or scrub those difficult-to-reach windows. Schimmelentfernung? Call a out-of-work banker. Just make sure he doesn’t fiddle with little Leon’s Sparschwein. And make sure he pays his taxes. There is too much Schwarzarbeit in Berlin.
