Paying a high price for executive salaries

I am becoming tired of the well-worn cliché: “To get the top talent, we have to offer top salaries”.

So we paid colossal salaries to our supremely talented bank executives (and look what they did to us!) I would subscribe to the views of Ben Dunne, who, a couple of years ago, expressed the opinion: “Their salary should be what it costs to replace them: and we have plenty of very capable young people with the necessary financial skills and experience who would gladly work for a tenth of what these people are being paid.”

When the crisis hit home, there was a general furore and widespread public outrage. Yet what happened?