The Sergeant Schultz Defense 0
Sergeant Schultz, you may remember if you are old enough, turned a blind eye to the antics of Colonel Hogan and his motley band, saying, “I know nothink! I see nothink!.”
Jonathan Freedland points out that this same defense is used by international banksters to deny culpability in the antics of their underlings in stealing from their customers, violating the public trust, and destroying national economies. A snippet:
At present the financial uber-class expect to have the best of both worlds – all the rewards of being in charge without paying the price of responsibility. It’s an individual version of the injustice laid bare during the great crash: that while gains are privatised, losses are socialised. The bankers get the big bonuses when things go right, the taxpayers bail them out when things go wrong.
In a way, the buck-passing has a logic. In an organisation such as HSBC, with 300,000 employees, it’s a Herculean task for one individual to know what they’re all up to. But that’s why these top jobs get Herculean rewards. The implicit deal for top chief executives and chairmen should be quite simple. Either you’re blessed with an extraordinary managerial talent that enables you to watch over so many people at once that you deserve these stratospheric sums of money – or you’re not, in which case you should be paid on a par with lesser mortals.Catch-22. It’s the best catch there is.
