Sympathy for outlaws thanks to greedy bankers

Is America witnessing the return of the bank robber as local hero? Seventy-five years after Bonnie and Clyde were dispatched in a hail of Tommy-gun bullets, the FBI is reporting a spike in bank robberies. And as long as the only victim is the bank's cash, there are indications that there is some sympathy for the robbers.

Which is hardly surprising when Americans get a report in the New York Times saying that Wall Street 'financial workers' - bankers, brokers, Masters of the Universe - awarded themselves $18.4bn in bonuses last year. It is a breathtaking figure - and most of it was paid after the financial crisis had become apparent.

Think of it as a chunk of a $700bn bail-out package from the taxpayers. Think of it as a proportion of the $35bn flushed down the khazi last year by the brokerage departments alone of the big banks playing roulette on Wall Street. And add this detail from the survey behind yesterday's Times story: 45 per cent of Wall Streeters declared themselves 'dissatisfied' with their 2008 bonus.

It was back in the days following the Crash of 1929 that America coined the term 'banksters', derived from 'gangster' and 'banker'. It became quasi-official when it was used in Congress’s 1933 Pecora Committee inquest into the causes of the Depression, according to Michael Woodiwiss, author of Gangster Capitalism, a prescient tome on the economy of the last 20 years.

"People became aware of widespread white-collar looting," he says. "Dismantling New Deal checks and balances has given business criminals many more opportunities today than their 1920s predecessors."

Americans have woken up once more to the idea that they have been taken on a glorious ride to ruin. There were cheers for Andrew Cuomo, New York's Attorney General, when he announced a criminal investigation into the $5bn worth of bonuses distributed at Merrill Lynch just as it went bankrupt. Turning Wall Streeters from capitalist heroes into banksters allows ordinary folk to let off steam.
 
But what about the folks on the other side of the fence? Bonnie and Clyde, immortalised in the Hollywood blockbuster starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, became outlaw heroes because they offered a vicarious revenge by robbing banks. They were not invented in the studio - they were a huge real-life story as their bank-robbing spree unfolded in the Thirties, and the newspaper readers were definitely not cheering for the G-men who eventually shot them.

Before Bonnie and Clyde came Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and before them the James Gang. "Americans have always loved an outlaw," I was once told by Johnny Cash, the singer who posed as the outlaw who 'killed a man in Reno, just to see him die'. "That's because the poor have always felt exploited by the rich, and they see the outlaw as a way of getting even."

It’s hard to keep the public on the side of the law when banks are the only victims

There are already signs that a new generation is working hard to meet the nation's emotional needs. The 'spike' in bank robberies reported by the FBI is across the country: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Jackson, Mississippi all report provisional figures for 2008 showing significant increases.

"The economy is driving some of this," says Chris Swecker, a former FBI officer who is chief security officer for the Bank of America. "We're even getting some anecdotal stuff from bank robbers." It is proving hard to keep the public on the side of the law when banks are the only victims and the average haul is just $10,000, chump change on Wall Street.

The cops are already compiling a list of nick-names on the Wanted posters, mostly derived from grainy images left on security tapes. They read like a studio cast list of the future: Fashionable Felon; Red Handed Bandit; Runny Nose Robber; Bad Bart; Careless Crew; Cue Card Robber - and the gang that surely shows the greatest potential for future mythology, The Blackhawk Bandits. ·