The Ballad of Tess and Adam

...Or why no one's occupying the Warsaw Stock Exchange building.

The global protests against the fat cats of banking that have drawn the world into economic crisis have passed largely unnoticed in Poland. A few youngsters protested in Warsaw on Sunday, but this was as nothing to the protests witnessed in Rome, Madrid, Athens, New York or London.

Why?

As Jacek Żakowski in yesterday's Gazeta Wyborcza points out, you'd be mightily pissed off if the bank lent you a lot of money on easy terms to buy a dream home, then repossessed it when you lost your job as a result of the economy imploding due to bankers' stupidity. Yet in Poland, he says, the banks would not lend people money in the first place, so they had no homes to repossess, and hence have less anger to vent.

I'd like to mention Tess and Adam, who got married in 2008. When they applied to the bank for a mortgage to buy a flat in Ochota, they faced an almost insurmountable obstacle course to get hold of the money. Despite being two young professional people with excellent job prospects, the banks looked for every reason not to lend them money. But being determined young professional people, they finally managed to borrow the money and bought the flat. Now they have two children, and are working hard to repay the mortgage. Some of their friends were less lucky - cooped up in tiny flats, they feel they can't have that second child they always wanted, and yet no bank would lend them the money to buy a larger flat.

Why are Poland's banks so reticent to put their depositors' money to use? Lack of imagination? Over-bureaucratic approach to lending? Risk aversion? Or good sense and prudent management of depositors' funds?

In hindsight, it's better that Tess and Adam had to go through long and unpleasant formalities to get that flat in an economy that's still moving forward than if they were to have been lent lots of money to buy something dearer and then for Tess to get sacked and Adam's business to grind to a halt and for them - and their two children - to lose the roof over their heads. For this is what has happened across the USA, in the UK and in western Europe. And there, such people are marching.

For another perspective - consider this. The EU Capital Requirements Directive III, implemented in the UK long ago and here in Poland from 1 January 2012, caps bankers' bonuses and redundancy pay-offs. In the UK, it applies to those 'identified staff' in key risk-taking positions in banks and brokerage houses whose bonuses exceed £500,000. In Poland, it will apply to people in those same positions, whose bonuses exceed the equivalent of... €50,000. Twelve times less.

No wonder Poles are not mad at their bankers in the way Brits, Americans, Italians, Greeks or Spaniards are. Neither did Poland's bankers behave in an wildly imprudent manner in the run-up to the crash, nor did they brazenly overpay themselves for failure. The Polish taxpayer has not had to bail out any banks.

Will Poland's economy go into recession? I think not. It's steaming ahead at a strong enough rate for any coming slow-down to be just that - a slow-down of growth, not a dip into economic contraction. 2009 all over again - the Green Island.

This time last year:
Of sausages and drains

This time two years ago:
In search of the Sublime Aesthetic at 36,000 ft

This time three years ago:
Lublin works its charm

This time four years ago:
London from the air