Libor Libor Pants on Fire

Mac's take on Barclays (From The Daily Mail)

Credit is like a drug. In fact, it's like a few drugs.

You start with something soft, like an overdraft, interest free for the duration of your student years. Then you move onto a credit card, the thrill of spending money that isn't yours on the never-never too tempting to pass up. Then a consolidation loan, just enough to free up some cash month to month. Next you get a Mortgage, it's worth it, you've got a house and one day it might make you a profit! Finally there's equity release, not a loan so much as a way to decimate the lovely profit that your house has just made.

You might as well be sat in a gutter, belt around your forearm trying to find a vein - please, just one more hit, one more grand, one more loan. And that's when the real pushers come in. Wonga.com and their ilk have become the loan sharks of the 2010s. There was a time when anything more than 30%APR was considered extortionate, now when you look at those ads, you see upwards of 1000%APR justified by the fact that "these loans are not a long term solution". Try telling that to the single Mum who is now paying half her weekly wage to one of these companies trying to play catch up.

So finding out that Barclays traders had been fixing interest rates didn't surprise me. It annoyed me, but it didn't surprise me. It made me feel physically sick with rage, but it didn't surprise me. Essentially it's like finding out your drug dealer has been in cahoots with the other drug dealers in the area and has kept the price of your crack artificially high. Yes, I just compared bankers to drug dealers, which is frankly offensive to drug dealers - at least they're honest about the work they do!

I feel so angry and helpless, and it has left me asking the question, how the hell did this happen? It started in 2005 when traders from several banks began fixing the LIBOR rates (London Interbanking Offer Rate) artificially high. This meant that when the banks loaned each other money, they could rake in huge profits. This went on throughout 2006, 2007 and 2008 and during the global recession when the purpose of fixing the rates was to deceive the world at large that they were doing better than they were.

Now obviously, I've been writing a lot about this, but there is a reason. I feel personally aggrieved by the behaviour of one particular bank - Barclays. At the same time as Barclays were raking in the profits through lying and scheming, they were also telephoning me between 3 and 4 times every day demanding that I paid them £300.00/month to repay my overdraft in the shortest possible time. I couldn't afford to do this, it was a large overdraft accrued during my time at University and in the end my father took out a loan that I repaid in order to get them off my back. It makes me feel physically sick that at a time when I was financially vulnerable, they were threatening me with court action and bailiffs requesting more than a 3rd of my monthly earnings, whilst defrauding the Bank of England, the British Tax Payers and of course their customers.

So is it time to say NO to the banks?

We are all so blinded by this perceived need to put our money in the hands of the banks that we can't imagine there is another option. My reason for staying with Barclays is simple, like an unfortunate divorcee, there's a lot of debt, all in my name, which has to be cleared before I can be rid of them. I've got an overdraft and a loan and so for the next 5 years (or less with a lotto win), I'll be tied to the bank.

I keep having this fantasy, a daydream of sorts in which I win the lottery - a big win. For most people they'd be dreaming about telling their boss where to stick their job... Not me! My fantasy has my bank manager calling me up personally to discuss my options and me uttering a string of expletives and then putting the money into my local credit union.

So what to do? I feel as though I'm in limbo. A curious mixture of abject fury and helplessness, I am just one person. How can I take on the banks? The reality is, I can't. My fury will remain, quietly poking me stomach lining until I get an ulcer and tapping away at my brain tissue. I am so angry I'm struggling to sleep and although that seems ridiculous, my righteous indignation has suffered a hit (if you don't know that's a Captain Bucky O'Hare reference, you're either too old or too young!). I worry so much for my entire generation, and the next, as it will be us who clean up after today's leaders. We're unlikely to get on the property ladder, we can't afford to insure our cars or have children or take holidays without almost impossible savings.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I have SUCH a desire to protest, march, make my voice heard. But there is that fear that my participation would lead to my arrest and ruin a possible future as a teacher. So how about a peaceful protest to begin with? How about joining a Facebook Group... may I suggest Topple The Banks? A civil forum for organised discussion. Somebody needs to fix this, and we can't rely on Cameron, Clegg or Milliband. They are more interested squabbling amongst themselves (Seriously, have you every watched Prime Ministers Question Time? It's like a school yard!) Could we be the first serious political party created on Facebook? Why not? We can't do much worse than the current lot...

More Banking Nonsense

It's been a long while since I've posted, but the past two weeks have really been infuriating me. I went to the bank about a month ago and agreed a strategy to get myself out of debt.

The first month was shaky, we had a hen night, wedding, gig, Jubilee and trip to Cambridgeshire so it was destined to be an expensive one. So I went back to my lovely personal banker who looked at me without judgement and said, ok, let's try a different tactic. I now have a spending account into which money goes on payday, and that is all I have to spend for the month. I also have a savings account to raise money for treats, wedding and eventually my overdraft.

Feeling very proud of myself, Nick and I have since booked a holiday and made a strict pledge to save up money for the flights and spends by September (thanks Mum and Dad for paying for it and for letting us just pay for the flights and not the accommodation).

Nickie and I are doing everything we can to raise the £600.00 each (£300.00 for flights, £300.00 for spending money) by September, and if we can, we will be in Turkey for two weeks in a lovely Villa chosen by Mum and Dad. We're shopping at Aldi, and spending no more that £25.00/week on food. We're taking lunch every day and eating very healthily - all salads and baked potatoes. No meals out, no takeaways (this isn't just a money saving thing, I want to lose a stone and a half by the holiday too). We are going to Chester Races this weekend which was booked ages ago and will serve as the final blow out, although even that is going to be done on the cheap as much as possible.

Our only treats will be Orange Wednesday cinema as it costs just £3.00/person with my Printworks savings card. At night we will be using our Apple vouchers to rent movies, playing on our new Macbook game "Cradle of Egypt" which we both downloaded after playing it on Mum Bernsmeier's computer when we went to visit. We CAN do this, I am determined that in the next three paydays, provided we don't splurge or go to Pride, we can save £600.00 each without resorting to the credit card!

So you can imagine my surprise when, after making this promise to the bank, more banking nonsense starts to emerge. Beginning with NatWest and their abysmal handling of their own personal banking crisis. It affected a friend of ours who banks with NatWest and also works in payroll. She spent Friday saying "Yes, I know, my salary hasn't gone in either". I think people might have been a tad more understanding had the crisis been resolved in a couple of days. But after SIX days of missed flights, lost homes and cancelled children's birthday parties, you could forgive people for being more than a little irate!

I was lucky that it didn't affect me, buI I felt so sorry for people, particularly when I read about the couple who missed their honeymoon! Even at that point I thought, it's forgiveable, it's a possibly unavoidable IT issue. So you can perhaps understand my fury when on Thursday night, unable to sleep I logged on to the paper to read about the Barclays Libor scam. It was 3 in the morning, but even through my sleep deprived haze, I knew that some SERIOUSLY illegal stuff had gone on. As day broke and more of the story about how traders had made themselves approximately one metric shit tonne of extra cash by lying, scheming and fixing interest rates, I found myself positively paralysed with anger. The next story to break was that this dishonesty, this collusion crossed the entire banking sector and through the upper echelons of management. Yes, that's right, whilst you and I were feeling guilty about splurging on that holiday and wondering how we could afford our Love Film subscription of £6.00/month, the banks were literally bullshitting their way to massive profits, and of course bonuses.

Meanwhile in the real world, small businesses were being missold insurance (again? Seriously?) and normal folk who work bloody hard were trusting their bank managers as they said "so sorry, no loan, you're a financial risk!" what the hell? These men, no better than gamblers who damn near bankcrupted the country telling us poor folk (very poor folk sometimes) that we're the ones who can't be trusted.

So, what is to be done? Well first to rewrite my British Spring blog and place the blame on the bankers. I don't think regulation could have neither predicted nor prevented this dishonesty. And then what? How about we protest? On the streets, on the internet and with our wallets! Goodbye to big banks and hello to community credit schemes. A friend of mine told me how she had just stopped paying her loan and it got me thinking. One person refusing to pay hurts only that person. The bank doesn't care. Just another sap who can be charged extra interest and fined up the wazoo! But what if it was a million people? What if it was 10 million? What if every person with a bank loan in the UK all simultaneously ceased paying? What could the banks do? What a glorious day! Perhaps then they will realise they are not untouchable. Sadly this is unlikely to happen as the only thing we fear more than not having enough money to pay for the stupid loans in the first place is bailiffs knocking on our front doors.

Any suggestions on a postcard to...