It's been interesting to see the reactions in the media and elsewhere on this issue.
Certainly Hester and Goodwin have acted as lightning rods for public displeasure and others are more deserving than Hester of censure, but life ain't always fair. No doubt the funds remaining to them will allow them to maintain their current lifestyles as some consolation.
There is much talk of people at this level being paid at 'the going rate' but it is exactly this point that is making the general population see red while the beneficiaries don't seem to understand the problem. The situation appears perfectly normal to them, hence their indignation about what is happening.
There are a class of people, not insignificant in number either, who have effectively detached themselves from the financial environment in which the rest of us live and they have done so by enriching themselves at our expense with their huge salaries, bonuses and automatic commissions etc. much of which have been based on artificial targets which allow them to cream off huge sums with little or no risk to themselves. With 'Casino' banking (using our savings deposits which attract derisory interest rates) they wheel and deal with all their complex financial instruments. But in a real casino there are winners and losers. In banking, if you make a paper profit then you are paid a substantial proportion of that as a bonus. But for every winner in a deal there must also be a loser and the loser is not penalised. On the next deal the positions may be reversed but again the winner gets the bonus and the loser is not penalised. So we just have a continuing 'money go round' which adds no economic value whatsover but allows large sums to be removed from the system into the pockets of those playing the game. That money has to come from somewhere and so it does - from us! That is why, as Dave correctly points out, there is such a wide margin between interest and loan rates. The whole system has become parasitical and the average joe in the street has now woken up to it as the effects are hurting him directly.
The problem is that changing the situation on one country isn't necessarily going to affect that in others where perhaps the pressures for change are not so great at the moment. But there does seem to be a tinge of panic emanating from the financial community and their handmaidens at the moment which suggests that they feel the foundations of their oh, so comfortable little world shifting under their feet.
Colin