Ed Miliband, leader of the UK's Labour Party, wants the British to pay for having a house worth more than £2m. He wants employees to give the government half of anything they earn over £150,000 a year. And he wants to abolish the “non-dom” status for foreign workers in the UK.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of Labour policies that will hit high earners, and in the case of the third in particular, hurt the City of London.
It is easy to see why the City is scared of potential Prime Minister Ed Miliband. Goldman Sachs last week warned of extreme volatility if he picks up that title on May 8. This is the same Goldman Sachs that, along with all its investment banking rivals, often blames a lack of volatility for lacklustre revenues.
But bankers and banking are being clobbered from all sides. The Liberal Democrats actually came up with the ‘mansion tax’, an idea that should be locked in a box along with "Help to Buy" and cycling in London with headphones in. They also want to introduce an additional bank levy.
The incumbent Conservative chancellor George Osborne, meanwhile, recently raised the UK's original bank levy and made it a permanent revenue earner for the government.
The banks brought this upon themselves, of course. The public, who bailed them out at huge expense, are still angry.
But the boom years were not all hot air and fairy dust. The UK built a financial services sector that drew companies and individuals from all over the world who wanted to do business in London. The capital city of this small island off the coast of Europe has the world’s fourth largest banking industry and its second largest legal services sector.
The figures behind the City's contribution to the UK economy scarcely need repeating. It needs to do a better job of educating the public about that contribution. Telling everyone how much of the government's tax revenue you bring in is not enough.
This comes with some caveats. Banks and bankers need to stop giving their opponents so much ammunition. It would help if bonuses could be held down for a few more years. And for pity’s sake, no more rigging of anything.
In the meantime, the City needs to decide whether it wants to be poorer or unemployed.
David Cameron’s promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union by 2017 is every bit as scary as Prime Minister Ed Miliband.
There is much debate over what exactly an exit would mean for London’s place in the financial world. The truth is no-one knows. But it is unlikely to be good. HSBC chief executive Douglas Flint described the prospect as a “disaster”, shortly after announcing his bank was considering moving its headquarters out of the UK, another negative swipe at banks' treatment.
The result is also anything but certain. A recent Populus survey suggested 39% of the UK public are in favour of leaving the EU versus 40% against, and as the Scottish independence referendum showed, the established parties in Westminster cannot count on what they would call ‘common sense’.
Cameron says he will campaign for the UK to stay in Europe in this referendum. But this is a prime minister who is failing to connect with those beyond the Tory core vote and has said he will give up the job by 2020. Can he deliver as head of that campaign?
In addition, a Labour-led government may not be the socialist revolution many are fearing. Banker bashing in public appeals to the party's own core vote, but in private it has been meeting with senior City figures trying to reassure them. Ed MIliband may be a lefty, but François Hollande he is not.
He is anti-business. He is distinctly non-prime ministerial. He looks weird when he eats. He may be unelectable by every conceivable criteria by which you could judge a modern politician. But he would keep the UK in the EU.
A Cameron win would bring a lot of uncertainty, just as soon as he announces the referendum date. The capital markets, and the banks that serve them, hate uncertainty above all else.