How to Borrow Money and How to Repay Borrowing and How to Avoid Borrowing

In the United Kingdom the Bank of England base rate is a mere half of one per cent, the lowest it has been in modern economic times. If you deposit money with a large bank or institution you will get a rate of interest tied to that half per cent; it may be a few points higher or a few points lower, depending on how long you are prepared to trust the bank with your money. In any event it will not produce a real return or even keep up with inflation, which is running comfortably more than 2.5% a year.

Banks: the chickens are coming home to roost

Bankers’ bonuses are going to be capped. The poor dears who rely on their bonuses to maintain their life styles will, in the European Union, have their bonuses capped to the equivalent of their annual salaries. It will be a small step on the right path and in the right direction, but it fails to deal with the underlying problem that the banks have caused and still cause for our economies. The second small step will be to separate the traditional banking business for taking deposits and lending from the highly speculative activities which involve what is in effect gambling with other banks.

A Mountain of Apples

Apple, the computer company, is sitting on $137 billion of cash in its banks. Even by today’s standards that is a huge amount of money.

The “help yourself” bank

The Royal Bank of Scotland is one of the United Kingdom’s largest banks. A few years ago it became insolvent and by any normal rule of business, if the shareholders were unable or unwilling to support it, the bank should have gone into insolvent liquidation. However, irony of ironies, the government deemed the bank too large to fail and supported it with so much cash that the government (or taxpayers more accurately) now owns 81% of the bank.

United States of America -v- Standard and Poors – How do you rate it?

One of the factors that made the financial crisis a disaster was the role played by the ratings agencies in rating bonds that were sold. These agencies have a powerful influence over our financial health; they rate the strength of banks, stocks, shares, investments and companies so that investors (who in most cases invest our savings and pensions either directly or indirectly) can understand what is risky and what is safe. On Monday a law suit of tremendous importance was issued in the USA. 

A stout door is better protection than the devices of the financial markets

As I locked the front door I realised just how much we have to trust our fellow human beings. The door is heavy and substantial and like most doors it can be broken down. Most of us are not protected by armed guards, security scanners and numerous devices; most of us rely on a door, a lock and the goodwill of those that live around us to keep us safe.

Bank Mis Selling to Small Businesses – Time to Fight Back

My law firm is acting for a number of business clients who have taken the brave step of suing their bankers. Although there has been much made of the bank’s so called mis-selling of personal protection insurance, which is better termed as simple deceit, there has been little publicity given to the plight of what are usually small businesses who have found to their surprise that they have bought all kinds of weird and incomprehensible financial products from their bankers, usually as a condition of a loan arrangement, only to discover to their cost that what they have bought was entirely inappropriate for them of their businesses.

Why Economic Recovery is Not Taking place

There are two factors which prevents economic recovery in the developed world. One is about the banks and the other is about the media.

A Very Short Analysis of the Modern Western Economy

The western developed world is in the process of impoverishing itself. This process started when people were encouraged to trust their savings to bankers and similar institutions. Those institutions on the whole invested some of those savings but gambled with other institutions with much of those savings. The gambling worked like all gambling; the game was rigged in favour of the house or the book maker but the rigging was far greater than a bookmaker or a casino operator would undertake. As a result huge amounts of money in the western world were transferred from those who earned it to those who acquired it by gambling.

Premium Phone Line Scams

Once upon a time we knew what fraud is. A scam, a con or a bit of skulduggery were easily recognised (after the event of course) and people tended to try and punish the perpetrators. Slippery Syd, a chap about whom I wrote a book, “the Master Con Man” used to spend huge amounts of time thinking up a scam, and putting it into practice, and then after having pulled off his “coup”  he usually ran away with his ill gotten gains, whether anyone was after him or not.