Bankers’ ‘talent’ is a burden for taxpayers

Taxpayers control Royal Bank of Scotland.
The liabilities heaped upon British taxpayers, just for the bank bailouts of 2008, are in £ billions, while the expenses of Members of Parliament, which have caused so much anger, are just in £ millions. £1 billion is one thousand times more than £1 million. So surely we should be a thousand time angrier over the financial collapse than over MPs’ expenses? Not a bit of it, maybe because we can grasp the concept of a million, but not of a billion. But grasp the concept we must because we will have to pay back the debts taken out in the name of ‘taxpayers’.
Meanwhile, the rampant greed in the City continues unabated. Big bonuses are back, allegedly to recruit and retain ‘talent’.
It’s precisely this ‘talent’ that got us into our present financial mess, by creating deals with no better purpose than to earn commission for their arrangers.
UK Financial Investments, which is supposed to look after taxpayers’ ‘investments’ in failed banks, approved a pay deal worth up to £9.6m for Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, if the bank’s share price reaches 70p.
This arrangement assumes that if the share price crosses the 70p threshold, it will be due entirely to Stephen Hester’s talent. This is not a valid assumption. Chance events might well propel the share price up, and then drive it down again. Why is it that bankers take the credit (and the money) when share prices rise, but demand to be rescued by taxpayers when the stock falls disastrously? Why is individual effort supposed to cause stock appreciation, but individual stupidity is rarely blamed for failure?
Answers please.