BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Tardis]

News that RBS has cancelled an £8billion facility with the BoE as part of the £48billion bail out, which would have pumped liquidity into the bank had it required the money. RBS had been paying £320m a year to keep the line of credit in place

A sale of RBS shares is reckoned to be somewhat further off. RBS shares closed yesterday at 320p, 180p off the taxpayer’s break-even price of about 500p

[Stanley]

So, Ossie's announcement that the taxpayer made a profit on the sale of shares in Lloyd's Bank was not correct, we lost £230million. See this LINK.

[Stanley]

Pressure seems to be building (very slowly!) on advertising by pay-day lenders. About time this parasitic business was curbed!

[Stanley]

I can't bear to think about the amount being loaded on credit cards. I don't know how accurate the figures are but they reckoned over £1BILLION a couple of days ago in one day. Booming economy?

[Stanley]

Reports of the resurgence of the old fashioned cheque. (LINK)

[Tizer]

Unfortunately the banks have lost the public's confidence in their security and customer care and this idea looks like an ideal new opening for the scammers and fraudsters.

[hartley353]

Still catching up with a months worth of post, amongst the letters was a missive from Wonga offering their services, I can't envisage any situation where I would require their services so straight in the bin.

[Stanley]

I agree about that bit Tiz. Luckily I don't have a 'smart phone'!

[Tripps]

There must be a hidden agenda here. Why on earth would the banks want to encourage cheques, when they have spent the last ten years discouraging them?

[plaques]

The banks will try anything that stops people in returning to the old habit of spending "real money". Every transaction that involves cards or cheques puts money into the bankers pockets. Casinos spotted years ago that gambling with chips encouraged people to part with their money. After all it wasn't "real" money.
I was told of a story where the lady of the house was constantly buying small gifts and presents for her grandchildren. The husband didn't mind, they could easily afford it but thought it was getting out of hand. His solution was to give his wife a wad of monopoly money where she was to tear up the equivalent value of the cheque then throw it in the bin. The end result was that the grandchildren got far fewer presents.

[hartley353]

My guess would be that free banking is close to the end, and cheque books could be a chargeable item, as could be the handling of cheques. Banks have always made a big deal about the cost of handling cheques, when in reality it is a fairly simple process.

[Stanley]

There has never been any such thing as 'free banking'. Whatever changes come in they will make sure that the banks make a bit more out of us. What can't be cured must be endured so bite the bullet! As for cheques, bits of paper need people to handle them and banks will not be satisfied until they have eliminated the 'human problem' in both staff and clients. In their mind set it's the logical way to run the business taking full advantage of their power to impose digital operation on us.

[PanBiker]

I saw a feature on the news the other day though that due to the massive uptake of portable digital communication devices and the fact that an awful lot of people now have a camera in their pocket or bag by way of a mobile or tablet. They are looking to accept pictures of cheques sent via email in order to speed up the clearing process.

This is all bullsh.... of course as everyone knows that with the electronic clearing already employed in the banks, the transaction is more or less instantaneous anyway. It's only the banks that put delay on so they can have use of the money. More smoke and mirrors which will look good to the electronically armed plebs who think that internet and any new way of smart banking gives them some kind of power. In my book if the bank wont accept a guaranteed building society cheque without ID, they have no chance of making this idea work.

[Marilyn]

I read about this photographing of cheques too, and the thing that I thought of is that this could start a whole new crime...taking a photo of a blank cheque from some unsuspecting persons cheque book, filling in the cheque with Photoshop, and processing it. The original cheque was never stolen!

[Tripps]

"There has never been any such thing as 'free banking'"

I think I've got as near as you can get. No charges - ever; full service, and they pay me about £9 per month interest on a current account. I'm happy.

[Tizer]

Anthony Browne, the chief exec who replaced Angela Knight at the British Banking Association, was on the Today programme this morning. Same old stuff - it could have been Ms Knight herself in disguise. Pouring out spin about what a wonderful job the banking industry does for the UK, paying all that tax to keep schools going etc. He seems to forget about all the other businesses paying tax, and the millions of individuals who pay tax but earn a tiny fraction of what the bankers earn. Then he tells us how Britain is the global centre for the finance industry as if we should be proud of it, when in reality it's the global centre for casino banking. If we were the global centre for casinos and betting would we be proud of it? How can we be proud of all the unethical behaviour of our banks, cheating elderly folk out of their savings and selling them dud policies and accounts?

Here are the biographical details of Anthony Browne on the BBA site in the press release on 6th June 2012 when he was about to take over:
"Anthony Browne is currently head of government relations for Morgan Stanley for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He was previously Mayoral Policy Director for Economic Development for Boris Johnson, responsible for economic and business policy for London, and on the boards of the London Development Agency and the London Skills and Employment Board. He helped set up, and is on the board of theCityUK, the promotional body for UK financial services. He was director of the think tank Policy Exchange and prior to that was a journalist for nearly twenty years for the Times, the Observer and the BBC. "

[Stanley]

Quite! I heard him defending £1million + £1million bonus as a reasonable reward for being a Master of the Universe. Pure bluff! He didn't mention the fact that at the same time they pay cleaners minimum wage and those on zero-hours contracts even less when pay per week is averaged out. Every move to rationalise wage structures in the banks and other financial services is neatly side-stepped and the safeguard of the remuneration committees is a sick joke. The bottom line is that without the support of these large capital holders governance would be a lot harder and the politicians take the easy way out, public utterances about reining the banks in but in the small back rooms colluding with the money men to keep the system going. By the way, we were also the world centre for LIBOR rigging. The way the gambling industry is going we will soon be the world centre of that as well.
This is capitalism gone mad and in the end it will destroy itself. One of the best allegories for this is still Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the parasitic classes ended up on their own planet using leaves as currency but starving to death. Shuffling money round using clever algorithms doesn't result in real wealth. This comes from the peasant farmers, the workers in extraction industries and value adding through manufacture and innovation. I know it gets up some people's noses but go and read Das Kapital again. Marx forecast many of the ills of modern society when he was writing in the mid 19th century. The bottom line is that we aren't fit to run an equitable and sustainable society and Mother Nature will punish us for it in the end. The bankers can then try making stew out of redundant derivatives.....

[Tizer]

Robert Peston put it in a nutshell on the evening news when he pointed out that these people who want bonuses double their salary are the same ones who wrecked the global economy. In fact it's worse than that, their actions have left us unable to afford a satisfactory level of armed forces to defend ourselves in an increasingly unstable world. And yet they still want us to believe that we can't do without them. At least some of us know the Emperor's claims about new clothes are untrue!

[Bruff]

Well it's just a joke really isn't it. To the extent it provides me at least with some consolation, I think it pretty well-established that these supposed great skills, this knowledge, this talent (call it what you will) the 'bankers' possess equips them little better than pure chance. One can then wonder whether the rewards are earned, as opposed to simply given.

Oh but look at the good works they do, cry the apologists. Well if generosity is best measured by the proportion of your monies you give away as opposed to a headline figure, the least generous in this country are the super-rich. The most generous? Well, we are all shamed by pensioners in mid-Wales.

Richard Broughton

[Tizer]

According to the BBC web site's review of newspaper headlines today:
"Telegraph illustrator Matt sums up the situation by picturing an RBS director telling an employee: "I can't give you a bonus, but there's a £2m reward for the person who finds my umbrella." A brolly lies on the floor between them. Meanwhile, Independent cartoonist Dave Brown's take sees the chancellor as a milkman riding on the back of a float. It's driven by a fat cat in pinstripes who knocks down Labour leader Ed Miliband as he makes off with the cream."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-25754363

[Stanley]

Richard, nice point about the pensioners. I agree that the masters of the universe have demonstrated conclusively that they aren't qualified to run the economy any more than we are. They have the levers of power of our modern capitalist society in their hands but aren't quite sure what they actually do! See the blind acceptance of complicated 'instruments' based on algorithms that can only be demonstrated to make short term profit, ignoring the warnings from their specialist IT advisers that there are hidden consequences. My daughter worked in compliance for a large bank and told me that all their warnings were ignored. All that mattered to the top floor was 'will it make profit?'.
The constant refrain from Cameron whenever he gets into a tight corner during PMQs is that it was all Labour's fault. He is right of course but never mentions the fact that because those same bankers were financing the Tory Party election campaign for 2010 they kept stumm. Can anyone remember them doing anything to protest against Labour policies on regulation?
The bottom line is that modern UK politics can't work without the full cooperation of the financial sector. They hold the purse strings and as long as that continues they will be left alone to do what they will. Public agonising about the need for reform but a completely different policy in the back rooms where policy is actually set. Big problem is of course that they are dealing in Monopoly money, it is sustained by ever rising debt and sooner or later this will have to be paid off.

[Bruff]

''.....all Labour's fault. He is right of course....'

'Right' to the extent that Labour were spending like Billy-o on the back of the tax receipts from the 'boom' - counter-cyclical spending that one can argue is unwise. However, Labour had a mandate for this from the 07 election, and it almost all went on health and education with other areas of spend often cut or flat. But more importantly, the then Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Chancellor Messrs Cameron and Osborne promised if elected to match Labour's spending. They also promised to 'share the proceeds of growth'. Being Tories, this means tax cuts and it implies two things. First, they had no qualms about the 'boom' which we now know was essentially a bubble. Second, tax cuts while spending like Billy-o would have increased the structural deficit which they are now so exercised about. So while no one would doubt Labour's failing the revisionism of the PM and Chancellor is remarkable in its chutzpah. And while they might argue they weren't aware of the scale of the problem at the time, this would only demonstrate their relaxed, shall we say, approach to their reponsibilities.

I would also note that the lax regulatory approach adopted by New Labour which one can argue was responsible in part, was far, far too stringent for the Tories. In opposition report after report was churned out calling for the culling of almost all regulation, or 'red tape'. They still are. Controls on the mortgage market in particular were seem as absurd. And as an aside to to illustrate the general mindset, in a report on regulation for the PM Mr Redwood argued that the first Factories Acts were wholly unnecessary as within 15/20 years of their appearing on statute technical advances made sending children up chimneys unnecessary!

The conspiratorial-minded could suggest that this legacy is one reason why the Tory party had deleted its online archive. And why on earth this is not rammed right down their throats I'll never know.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Spot on Richard, thanks for that.
Of course, knowing me, you won't be surprised to hear me raise the dreaded word HISTORY! Start with FDR's Inauguration speech in 1933. Go to this LINK for the full text, read it and reflect on the fact that it was as true in 2008 as it was then. Fast forward to right wing support in the US for the Chicago School of economic theory, Friedman et al. This posited that the market was always right and consequently there was no need for 'repressive' regulation of the financial sector. This led to the erosion and final repeal of Glass Steagall, the act brought in to curb the banks. Right wing monetary economists all over the globe jumped on the band wagon and swallowed the theory hook line and sinker because the increase in financial activity meant more profits to tax and eased the fiscal management of governments. Thatcher and Keith Joseph went further and decided that all we needed was a 'service economy'. Dirty and inconvenient items like manufacturing industry, mining, transport and maintenance of infrastructure were not supported and left to the market. The extension to this was of course privatisation, the selling off of the commanding heights of the economy. Trebles all round in the world of finance. For a while it all looked wonderful, there was talk of the death of boom and bust and magic phrases like 'The New Economy'. Unfortunately it was a mirage because the cash flow was made of paper, not real, hard earned money. Nevertheless personal debt became the new icon. Greed was good and spending on consumer goods and housing not only massaged the economy but gave entry to the world where status was measured by the ability to consume. 2008 was when the gravy train hit the buffers because the house of phantom money collapsed. This was where the next big mistake occurred. Conventional, current economic thought dictated that the banks could not be allowed to fail so £1.25trillion (the whole of the kitty and then some!) was poured into failed institutions leaving us bankrupt.
Consider this, and I have argued it consistently since 2008, suppose part of that money had been injected into the economy to boost disposable incomes in the lowest 50% of the population. These are the families that spend their income. The money would have gone into the general domestic economy and triggered the multiplier as it worked its way through the system. Keynesian economics and as such anathema to the right wing monetarists. So it never happened and we find ourselves where we are now with personal and family debt increasing daily. Debt and overspending got us into the mess and it is being used again to try to get us out. Go and read FDR again and recognise that it worked then and could do so now. Problem is of course that we'd have to borrow the money to do it....
It's a bit of a mess isn't it. I can't see a way out and as I have said elsewhere, the real danger for me now is the effect of all this long term deprivation on society. There are signs that the old principles we worked on are eroded to vanishing point and the most likely outcome I can see is the necessity to fight all the 20th century battles again and hopefully end up in 1945!
I do go on don't I!

[Tardis]

So Mr Darling, was it a good idea to save RBS?

The cash cow for everyone, except the people of the UK? Posting an £8billion loss this year, paid for by whom?

[plaques]

So Mr Darling, was it a good idea to save RBS?

We are told that if RBS was left to go to the wall it would have been "goodbye team GB". Personally I think it would have been nice to protect the retail side and let the gamblers take a hit. As events unravel it appears that RBS has been involved in every banking scam under the sun. I would offer that these scams would never had surfaced if it continued to be a private bank. Its anybody's guess what the other banks are hiding. Was it a good idea! I would like to see a cross party inquiry into this subject.