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Independent Banking Advisory Service |
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Banking News & UK Comment 2010 How the Banks Won - Will Hutton with a Channel 4 documentary under Dispatches - 'He also investigates the banks' intense lobbying to resist government plans for reform and highlights recent research from the OECD on how Britain is internationally unusual in the extent to which bankers have key roles in the civil service and government.' EDDY WEATHERILL (IBAS) Comment on 15 June 2010: This programme showed the effects of a banking industry which has controlled itself and this country for far too long. It also illustrated that the industry has enjoyed excessive power and control over the general public that most members of the public would not believe - until about 2 years ago. That is due in part to ineffective Government regulation (in fact none) but also to the BBA and the other wealthy bank lobbyists who have effectively 'worked' successive Governments into doing what the bankers wanted. The next year or so will see the general public all pay for the past excesses of bankers. We will now all suffer because successive Governments bowed to these people as they plundered and pillaged profits before the 'bubble' finally burst. The warnings were there often enough over many years. But, greed and profit were too good. IBAS warned successive Governments of the plundering of small business by banks, of the plunderring of personal assets after businesses were forced into liquidation and where personal guarantees were called upon - following excessive fee and interest taking by banks. Nobody wanted to control them or make them work properly for the UK in providing business with the necessary funding but without excessive controls and excessive fees and interest hikes by banks to provide the banks with short term profits. Well we are now in the mire. Bankers are to blame because they wanted control over everything which earned profits for others - mortgages, insurance, pensions. They sought them all and gobbled them up to gorge on the profits. Can we now have a Government which controls the banks, splits them up into smaller units and transfers the benefits of their past profiteering back to the people they ripped off? Can we also now have a better and more effective way of funding small business than by using banks - within the next 12 -24 months? It isn't rocket science and from what we have seen bankers and small business are not compatible - because they have completely different agendas. If neither is possible - then there will be nothing left for anybody to make a profit from! Unfortunately, evidence of banks exerting unfair pressure on their business customers, by taking additional higher interest rates and fees and by using unfair pressure to increase the bank's profits is still happening. Banks are now claiming profits for the last quarter (as we always knew they would). There is no science in this and it's not a new tactic - but somewhat refined from the last recession. The banks are aware that additional fees and interest may well tip businesses into insolvency. But, banks have always adopted a 'me first' priority and take individuuals personal security for their benefit after a business fails. Whilst Government may change - banks unfortunately do not - the FSA and OFT has a lot to do to make the necesary changes - a start has been made - but there is a long way to go for bank regulators in the UK - 10/05/2010 Last November we asked - Can bank customers trust bankers, banking and the banking industry now? Is this the start of a new era? - Well has it changed or are there signs of change? Independent Banking Advisory Service (IBAS) is a national, independent, non-profit, unique specialist banking customer membership organization which resolves banking complaints and disputes and which has campaigned on UK Banking customer issues since 1992. We provide bank and business banking assessment, analysis, bank comment and content for BBC TV News, ITV, Radio and national newspapers. |