London

I was talking the other day to a U.S. banker who works in the City for a British bank. He was complaining about a decision-making process that was cumbersome by American standards. But his main issue was a feeling that bankers in Europe are seen as the enemy — overpaid profiteers. It was a relief to get to New York, he said, where the economic mood was more upbeat and post-meltdown fury fading.

The banker’s words came back to me on my return this week to Europe from the United States. The headlines were all about bankers’ bonuses and executive pay curbs. European Union finance ministers have approved, over British objections, the capping of bankers’ bonuses at twice their salary — and a bonus that big will require the approval of two-thirds of shareholders. The normal cap will be a 1:1 ratio of bonus-to-salary.

The Swiss — no less — have approved in a referendum a series of executive pay curbs, including banning golden hellos and goodbyes and giving shareholders a binding say on executive pay.

When the Swiss get riled over the rich and their money, some big shift is afoot. Europe is doubling down on solidarity.

I understand the anger. A 200 percent bonus should be sufficient for anyone. The recklessness of executives at too-big-to-fail banks in the run-up to the 2008 meltdown cost just about everyone — except themselves. Huge bonuses tend to encourage the taking of short-term risks. The masters of the universe have had their moment: the 1,701 people applying for 8 low-paid jobs as “baristas” in a new Costa Coffee branch in Nottingham should not have to read about multimillion-dollar golden handshakes.

All true — but beware the feel-good retribution that returns to haunt you. City jobs will disappear (Boris Johnson, the conservative mayor of London, called the measures “moronic”). Fixed salaries may rise to offset the loss; they are harder to claw back.

At a more fundamental level, John Authers has argued persuasively in the Financial Times that the real problem is not bonuses but corporate governance. As he writes: “Limit the leverage that banks can use, and require them to hold more capital, and bonuses will be less variable. Tell them that they cannot trade with depositors’ funds, or split the biggest banks, and compensation will be less variable.” What is needed is a “a banking system that can sensibly allocate savers’ capital to productive investment opportunities. The compensation issue, to the extent that there is one, is dealt with in the process.”

But when Europe sees an opportunity to control or regulate free markets it still has a hard time resisting. These measures are good politics for European politicians. They would not fly in the United States, for all the anti-Wall Street anger engendered by the Great Recession.

The essential difference between the United States and Europe endures. It is over risk and reward. The American experience begins with risk, that of immigrants who went there in the first place. The European experience ends with solidarity, the insurance policy an old and war-scarred Continent has taken out against the worst. America yearns to be free, Europe to be free of want: politicians must pitch their appeals accordingly. These are core characteristics, written into the respective DNAs on each side of the Atlantic.

Where America enshrines the individual, Europe ennobles the collective. As to which approach is preferable, that seems to me a matter of personal choice. Capitalist churn can be cruel. On the other hand social democratic solidarity can be stultifying. It may be easier to get ahead in America. It is certainly far better to be left behind in Europe. Which is more important to you?

We may dream of Eumerica, some transcontinental fusion where the can-do attitude is American and the healthcare French. But in the end a choice must be made: Do you want your capitalism raw or remedied?
Some say this is a time of transAtlantic convergence. When President Obama calls for a trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement in his State of the Union address and all the talk in Washington is of avoiding war and saving money, it may indeed seem that this is a time of U.S.-European coming together and that the days of inhabiting Mars and Venus (in Robert Kagan’s phrase) are over.

I do not believe it. Mark Leonard had an interesting Reuters column the other day called “The Europeanization of America,” which noted the points of apparent convergence and quoted Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense, saying (with caveats): “We don’t want to be the world’s policemen.”

It is true that the U.S. wars without victory in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped the fires of Mars. America’s new God is the Drone. There is a touch of Europe’s Venus in the U.S. pivot away from Bush-era bellicosity.

The rise of the rest has left Europe and the United States with shared anxieties over insolvency. The convergence, such as it is, has about it something of a desire to dilute misery by sharing it.

But Americans will still take the bonus and run while Europeans strive worthily to redistribute it.