Barclays' Diamond Blasts Obama

Barclays’ Bobby "Blood" Diamond has a few words for Barack Obama a few hours before the U.S. President hits the court for his first State of the Union address: “Big is beautiful,” says the U.K.-based Barclays chief, explaining that breaking up banks and make them smaller will not help but hurt (it certainly won’t hurt Barclay’s bottom line, either). Bob is peeved that “good” banks like his that didn’t make of mess of themselves may suffer for the mistakes of the masses of financial institutions that did.

Some of those banks, which have altered their compensation practices, seem to be getting the message that the U.S. government is sending. At least on paper. Today the Journal highlights the clawback provisions that BofA, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase have recently enacted in order to at least appear to be mitigating the risk taking inside their walls that contributed to a worldwide financial crisis costing hundreds of thousands of jobs and other fun stuff. Compensation experts, according to the Journal, admit that although the clawbacks are a “step in the right direction,” they “could wind up being far less effective than they look on paper.”