Bankers are £ankers

[Tommo21]

No wonder the financial world is in turmoil. I’ve just looked into the Halifax web site and the main heading is “£3000 interest free student overdraft”. A sure fire way for students to spend money they haven’t got and an even better way of teaching them about living off credit. I don’t know about you guys but it really gets on my wick the way banking is going these days.

And what about this other airline collapse. I wouldn’t mind if they come out and say they’ll stop trading after a certain time. No, they just shut shop taking peoples hard earned holiday money the day before. I’ll bet the company bosses will be okay.

 

[dangermouse]

Most students cannot survive without an overdraft - I had a hefty one in my university days, and would never have finished without it. When you have to pay £50 a week (prob a lot more now) for a room in a dodgy house, together with thousands in tuition fees, cost of books etc, it is inevitable that you need to borrow money (and there is obviously the essential expense of drinking heavily every day). I assume you paid cash for your first house, so the need to borrow money probably doesn't apply to you.

As for the travel companies, Boeing/Airbus will exercise liens over their planes which are paid for over time if any company announces it will close on x date. The reason they stop trading overnight is almost always due to the fuel companies refusing to allow credit on the fuel required to move the planes around. Given that most top bosses in such businesses have large shareholdings/option packages etc, they actually lose more in monetary terms than anyone else (although they have also benefited from larger salaries in the past, so whether they do better or not is a matter of contention - I agree with you that most do).

It's the idiots who turn up at airports (with their kids, during term time - whats that all about?) and then cry on the telly about a plane not taking off when it was cancelled the day before that are the £ankers, as you put it.

 

[HTL]

The Halifax overdraft of £3000 is only available to students post four years of study, I had an account with them when I was at uni, the overdraft is optional and you have to have a meeting to extend it. Its not as mad as it sounds and without I would not have been able to live some months.

 

[Tommo21]

Okay, all the other banks dont offer anywhere near that amount..............thats why were all in the [****] right now. Too much credit is available and that’s my point, nothing to do with students going out and getting pissed........sorry buying books.

 

[Sneds]

Halifax is my saviour.

 

[haplesshacker]

Okay. IMHO, this whole current situation has been caused by one bank selling off debt to another bank and the dirivitive traders betting on market movements etc. It's these traders (loose cannons, gamblers) that have been allowed to risk so much cash. The banks don't care as long as the traders are making them money. But when it goes wrong, as it has done massively, it's us that have to suffer.

I took a lot of pleasure at seeing these traders loosing their jobs.

All I can see happening at the moment is capitalism is heading for a communist style breakdown, similar to what happened in the USSR in the 80's.

Yes we've had it to easy, regarding getting credit, but the personal debt that the western world has is unsustainable.

As for house prices. Estate agents should have 'stock' ie they buy the houses from the seller, and then sell them on to the buyer. This way houses price rises and falls would be stablised, estate agents would not be able to over value properties. No chain sales are much simpler and quicker, and the estate agents would be under pressure to perform, and do their jobs properly. By doing this would also kick start the housing market back into motion, and houses could remain more affordable. The amount of money an estate agent makes would depend entirely on the difference between the buying and selling price. Just an idea / thought.

PS I do have friends that work in the city and some that are estate agents. So I'm not anti them as people, just the jobs that they do.

 

[RGuk]

It's a funny old world. I find banks ok, but for many years I have played them at their own game....if their service to me doesn't match the "promise" I complain and am currently "up" with more goodwill payments credited to my account than charges. It's not an easy game though because when you/we are on the wrong side of a problem, we are so poorly protected. If a bank over-extends credit to a customer (and any numpty could spot some of the bad loans) then the outlook is brutally punitive on the customer.

I believe in democracy and capitalism but without strong government and careful regulation (plus the ability to clamp down on damaging trends in lending) there is nothing the small man can do to be part of a successful financial structure.

What we need is more genuinely clever folk monitoring where things are going (government) and then people with no vested interest to keep institutions in check (independent regulators). I'd laugh at banks going bust and the markets spiralling downward were it not for the fact that ultimately, the man in the street loses out.

 

[medwayjon]

This will give you an idea of some of what they get upto that is completely ridiculous.

Last year I sold a lady a Mercedes C-Class, she required HP and basically this is how it turned out. She earned £950 per month her outgoings were £1100. She had £13,000 in credit card debt, was permanently in her overdraft, was in arrears on her mortgage and was also on a debt-management plan for other unsecured borrowings.

Anyway, a major well-known finance house ACCEPTED her for finance. She was told by us that she would be an idiot to go through with this deal, yes I want to make money but not by seeing people get deep into the fairway bunkers of life. She would not listen however as she needed a car (hers had died) to get to work and had absolutely no ready cash and had no other way to purchase. It ended up reposessed by the finance company a few months later

So why did the finance company do this deal???

Basically they are company that the parent firm has been trying to offload for a while. The higher the value of their book, the better the opportunity for profit for the company buying them out is the idea. This is why they went from a prime-sector lender to taking on borrowers from a non and sub-prime market to simply bolster their book.

 

[Tommo21]

Now HBOS and TSB. The very few with loads of cash are making a mint with all this speculation.

 

[GB72]

The annoying fact is that those who were doing the majority of the speculative deals are those who are going to some out this OK. Heard on the radio last night that other companies have been stalking the big names at Lehmans bank for nearly 6 months in case they went under. With that in mind, those who made the bad deals and caused the collapse will be walking straight into new jobs whilst the support staff etc are left to carry the can.

 

[shanker]

All I can see happening at the moment is capitalism is heading for a communist style breakdown, similar to what happened in the USSR in the 80's.

Yes we've had it to easy, regarding getting credit, but the personal debt that the western world has is unsustainable.

I agree with you. The system is unsustainable but we'll all be long gone before it collapses.
Regards
Karl Marx (Shanker)

 

[RGuk]

I sought out an economist to decipher what the hell has been going on. It appears that the answer to my simple question "how does an insurance company go broke?" revealed a shocking insight into the way things work. I naively thought an insurance company (as opposed to a bank) took all the money from the policies and invested them in fairly safe places to gain a little interest and then be available for claims and what's left, profits. I knew that pensions etc. went for different levels of risk. b.t.w.
But, it makes no difference whether we are talking banks or b/s or insurance companies, they all take a lot of risks with their investments (our money) and all of them are taking a hit, good and bad companies.
Essentially, the supposedly clever and massively overpaid people at the top of the chain allowed the "investment" staff to play the stock market....so if the market is wobbly and the derivatives trading taking a hit, then instead of our money sitting safely behind bars, it's out there in virtual-money land going down the toilet.
So, there we have it. The expression "the value of your investment may go down or up" had no bearing on these folk, they just ploughed our money all over the place, revelled in the security that a wide spread should just about be safe, and voila......all the cash you need is lost.....

Maybe I got it wrong....but it seems that in searching for extra interest by investing rather than banking our money, pretty much all the major players have exposed themselves to the risk of the current recession. Greed.....plain and simple....

 

[Tommo21]

And there we have it peeps, just where I came in.

 

[Tommo21]

Is it me, is it too complicated for the everyday laymen. What we’ve got is a group of people, the market traders, who continue to manipulate the world leaders as they try to bail out the very people who are bringing it down on a daily basis.

I’m now convinced that the markets and the banks know they have the leverage and the power to get all the countries leaders to guarantee everyone’s money so they can carry on making major mistakes without them loosing any money themselves.

 

[haplesshacker]

I thought that it was only deposits that were being guaranteed. Not things like pension funds and equities. Which is where a lot of us have more money tied up in than a deposit account at the bank.

But I think that you're right about the banks and traders. It's their actions that are causing the whole system to collapse. The politicians have virtually no control of what is happening in the markets. That's the whole point of capitalism.