Recent psychological experiments on our response to money have proved, a) salaries above £75,000 don’t cause greater productivity or higher satisfaction, b) even an unconscious awareness of money impairs enjoyment, and c) wealth is best enjoyed by giving it away. These aren’t wish lists of, “wouldn’t it be nice if…’, they’re university based research studies. Oh also statically wealthy people and men give away less percentage of their wealth than poorer people and women. The obvious conclusion is wealthy, well bonus-ed, male bankers are deserving of our pity for being unhappy, unsatisfied specimens. My limited experience of the financial sector confirms this. It’s not that they are permanently glum and suicidal but rather, in their pursuit of the finer things of life, they lose an awareness of the simple pleasures of it. Why enjoy the rain or a kick about with your mates when you can sip Chateauneuf Du Pape in the sanctuary of your Sheraton suite? The more interesting point is they, to overcome this dredge of expensive vacuity, conclude, “just a little bit better champagne and perchance another Ferrari will do the trick.” If these studies are to be believed they are barking up the wrong dead horse, sinking deeper in the wrong mire, ramping up the drug of their choice. They are in the grip of a never-fulfilling prophecy. They are a dead parrot. OK that’s established. But, they are intelligent individuals and well capable of levering more of the money supply in their direction. So this proven aberration can result in the under funding of the rest of us. We are getting poorer to fund the rich getting unhappier without them even realising it. This will be my theme for 2011, that and cows and their excrement. I think that constitutes a balanced portfolio.
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