Why do we subsidise this waste of talent?

HSBC chief executive Mike Geoghegan has made raised the predictable complaint about Vince Cable that his call for 'restraint' – rather mild when there are over a thousand City bankers earning more than £1m a year – might drive bankers abroad.

"We pay for talent and we have to pay the market rates," he said.

But what is talent here? This is the question the political world needs to ask. Is this a good use of talent, to set it loose in the corrosive, speculative world, and deprive the real world ...