Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
There is a lot of confusion as to how banking works and how it got us to where we are today. The secret is that banks deal with imaginary money which is all fine when people are happy to leave the banks to get on with it but when everyone decides they want to see their money the banks have to scramble to try to find as much money as they can which is why they avoid lending it to anyone else.
You will be able to read a nice little story that explains the way the banking system controls us all and convinces us that we need them and charges us for the services they provide.
Follow this link to read about it. The Money Myth Exploded
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The Banking industry is in court again, this time appealling against a judgement given when the OFT went to court and claimed that bank charges were unfair and that the OFT should be able to decide on what a fair charge would be.
The QC for the banks claimed that the charges provided a significant part of the income the bank received to cover the cost of bank accounts.
You can probably see how obviously unfair this is in that the people who may struggle to maintain their bank accounts in the black end up subsidising people who can easily afford the cost of running a bank account.
One of the appeal judges picked up on this point and said that this seems to be clearly unfair. A view regected by the banks on the basis that the whole range of banking services was covered by this so it was not unfair.
We have recently seen how the banks have considered themselves and their profits more important than any countries economy. So long as they get their bouses they don’t give a toss what happens to anyone else.
It is shocking that the banks have been allowed to get into a position where they can do so much damage but it is even more shocking that they have such arrogance as to think they can decide what is decent, honest and what justice really means.
The banks are supposed to be a service industry but they seem to continue to believe they are the masters of the universe and can do anything they like. The sooner they are cut down to size the better off we will all be.
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 10:17 am
It is very hard to understand how the banks could have got themselves in such a dreadful position that without goverment support they would have struggled to survive and possibly collapsed. They have their hand in everything we do and take a commission almost everywhere that money changes hands. It is a recipe for getting very rich and a business model that many would envy.
Imagine if you can, every single transaction made right across the country involves a little commission for the banks. When you pay by credit card, when you pay by debit card. When you get paid and the money goes into your account, there is a fee, when the shop you buy from pays money into the bank there is a fee.
It would be very hard to live without a bank account these days. Even the government pushes people to have bank accounts to pay benefit and other money in. The banks have made themselves an essential service in modern society.
The very fact that the government has pretty much agreed that the main banks cannot be allowed to fail shows also that they cannot be allowed to act against the interests of consumers and the country. The banks have unprecedented power but they also have a huge responsibility to behave properly.
Banks should be boring, they should be dull and uninteresting. Bonuses are no more justified in banking than they are for a bus driver or shop worker. There is a very good case to be made that bonuses are what destroyed the banks and almost certainly the ‘sell products and get bonuses’ culture banks have chosen in recent years has alienated retail customers and changed the nature of modern banking.
The banks have to change. We do not want to revisit this credt crisis in a few years time. The banks must be forced to becoming boring and dull and dependable once again.
