If you can keep your bonus when all about you <br />Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; <br />If you can complicate financial dealing <br />So that no-one on earth knows what you do; <br />If you can take the hard earned cash of others <br />And lend it with little chance of any return <br />And account for such bad loans as assets, <br />And walk away with millions in your pockets. <br /> <br />If you can dream-and see yourself as master; <br />If you can think of others…but keep yourself the aim, <br />If you can turn the world economy to disaster, <br />And make yourself wealthy just the same. <br />If you could learn the profession of a teacher, <br />And do that in just half a year; <br />Then teach our children mathematics <br />And be a role model of grown-up ethics. <br /> <br />If you can take a banks’ shareholder value <br />And gamble it on one speculative merger, <br />And sign it off without the diligence due, <br />And lose, but never accept it was your error: <br />If you can ruin a multitude of pensions <br />And destroy the economies of many nations, <br />And be saved by tax payers’ billions, <br />But still walk away with wealth untold. <br /> <br />If you can talk with ministers and directors, <br />Or sit on boards-and never be in common touch, <br />If you think your pay should be that of a hundred others, <br />If money counts with you, and so very much: <br />If you can stuff a balance sheet full <br />Of toxic assets that have value to none, <br />Yours is the City and everything that's in it, <br />And-which is more-you'll make a banker, my son!<br /><br />Will Gosh<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-bankers-if/
