Whose fault is that, think carefully… I’ll give you a hint a mirror would be handy

You’re quaaaaare sound…

Mike, it is one of the few things where the customer has the banks by the short ‘n’ curlies and not the other way around for a change.

I know .. I have one ! The latest desrease will pay my prop tax !

You’re better off clearing these debts as soon as possible IMO.

@Fionn – not sure if you realise so apologies if I’m being patronising but the interest you pay back on 12,000 compounded over 3 years at 8.45% apr is 3,448; on 9,000 compounded over 5 years at 7.75% is 4,243 with no savings or interest in savings so you’re actually paying back more to the bank the new way. But it’s a more manageable sum to repay if that’s what you were looking for.

@niall Could not agree more, those in power have never given a damn. These loan sharks are glorified gangsters that prey on the vulnerable.

Rome Aug 2103 .. Italian Voters scrapped their hated Local Property Tax (IMU) on Family Homes.

Irish Voters will also take the law into their own hands in the next election and scrap it.

I agree. Most people in difficulty cant get a loan/overdraft from a bank where their wages are lodged monthly/weekly but can access a loan by making one phone call.

It will be worse when the credit unions fall under the umbrella of the banks which apparently it is doing at the moment.

A valid question

How many know that banks’ ‘Reserves’, fractional or otherwise have no bearing whatever on whether banks lend or not?

They don’t lend either reserves or deposits. In fact loans create deposits, because banks credit customer loan accounts from thin air, creating both the customer liability & their own asset simultaneously.

So, ‘loanable funds’ or banks as mere ‘intermediaries’ is largely bollox. (But a highly convenient deception for the banksters who have ensured that their operations have been excluded from all mainstream economic forecasting models. Doesn’t say much about mainstream economists eh?)

Banks do have ‘Capital’ constraints, but as we’ve seen, ‘creative’ accounting of valuations of often complex financial instruments, counted as Capital, has rendered this constraint fairly meaningless as well.

Deregulation of banks – the high street variety, responsible for the payments system – should never have happened.

95% of what such ‘systemic’ high street banks now do in ‘complex’ products & proprietary trading should be banned.

Former regulator William Black has called current system ‘criminogenic’ and has accused publicly most of the big six US banks (and some others) of ‘control fraud’.

None has sued him for libel – the last place they want to be is answering questions in a court room. (Hence all the out of court ‘settlements’ for Libor rate rigging, class action customer defraud and all the rest.)

It’s not rocket science to regulate high street banks. A public system is a good option too. The neo liberal mantra of ‘competition’ for systemic, payments system banking is pure stupid. We’ve seen the results – fraud & reckless behaviour that blows up taking the real economy with it.

But the banksters have the biggest lobbying operation in the world, owning most of the US Congress & much of Europe’s political & public institutions.

They already succeeded in getting ‘lowest common denominator’ (race to the bottom) forced deregulation into the WTO ‘trade’ regulations around 1999. (Where no financial services had been previously included or thought necessary for ‘trade’ agreements.)

I’ll lay money on the fact that financial services (de-) regulation is the driving force behind the (Wall St. shill) Obama administration’s secretive rush to sign a transatlantic ‘trade’ deal – the so called, barely publicised TTIP.

These binding international ‘trade’ deals are only marginally about trade in real goods, but are all about preventing national governments from protecting their citizens from predatory multinational corporations. And writing legislation to that effect with virtually no public or democratic scrutiny or even publicity.

There is a reason that further WTO ‘agreements’ have completely stalled for over ten years after repeated attempts to finalise & sign the ‘Doha’ agreement.

Some of the global ‘South’ finally couldn’t stomach any more rip offs, voted in some real politicians who’d grown a pair & told the US (& its allies) where to stuff their ‘deals’.

So it’s back to the ‘bilateral’ arrangements where multinational corporations agree in secret with poodle politicians etc. to divvy up & stitch up the rest of us. Minimal pesky ‘democracy’ involved.

The whole system is rotten to the core & filled with comfortably off ‘landlords’ agents’, like mainstream economists & senior public servants (we expect politicians to lie anyway) who could care less about ordinary citizens.

Time for Mr Brand’s (non violent) revolution I think.

Rightbackatya, Patrick .