BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Stanley]

I remember talking to Janet about matters like this when she was working for a major merchant bank as a watchdog in security matters. She said that the level of understanding at board level was very low, all that concerned them was the profit and loss line and all decisions were predicated by this simple criterion. I wonder if anything has changed?

[Stanley]

It looks as though we were right when many of us voiced suspicion about the soaring value of Bitcoins. I see that the record rise has been followed by a precipitous fall.
Have a look at THIS report predicting the course of Bitcoin in 2018. I shall not be joining in the gold rush!

[Tizer]

Not banks this time but another set of fat cats...the housebuilding companies. I've mentioned before how the CEO of Persimmon was `benefiting from a £100 million package' even though the success of his company was due to the government's Help to Buy scheme and thus funded by our taxes. There has been such an outcry that the Chairman of the company and the chairman of the remuneration committee have both had to resign. But the CEO, poor chap, soldiers on and refuses to answer any questions from journalists or to respond to any suggestions that he should give a large part of the money to charities. And a happy new year to him too - I hope his baubles wither on the Christmas tree.

[Stanley]

'Snouts in Troughs' springs to mind time and time again. Private Eye is very vocal on this subject....
There is something seriously wrong with ethics, they seem to be extinct..... As I keep pointing out, there are good reasons why the stock markets are so buoyant. The Lords of the Universe are doing very well out of austerity and these are happy days for them.....

[Stanley]

We knew THIS but an up to date report in the Sun brings home the full extent of the bank's retreat from the High Street.
I think this is the right place for THIS report in the Lancashire Evening Post. It gives a gloomy picture of pay prospects for Lancashire next year. I suspect that this picture holds true for most parts of the UK.

[plaques]

Just a couple of snippets from Vince Cable's book.

The owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses, and mechanical products, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to the bankruptcy of the banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the state will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.
Karl Marx. (fortunately we can safely disregard this prediction because it will never happen. Will it?)

On the US policy towards bailing out banks.

'Socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor'
Martin Luther King. (not far off if you think about it)

[Stanley]

Both are perceptive and accurate P. I have been convinced for a while that we are being subjected to the biggest con trick ever.....

[Tizer]

`'Fat cat Thursday' as top bosses pay overtakes UK workers' LINK
If you earn an average UK salary, by the end of today a top boss will have earned more than you do all year. In fact, it takes a top chief executive just three days to earn £28,758. The day has been declared "Fat Cat Thursday" by think tank the High Pay Centre and HR industry body the CIPD, which calculated the figure......

[Stanley]

"However, free-market think tank the Adam Smith Institute said it was a "mistake" to worry about executive pay." was the quote in that article that grabbed me. They would say that wouldn't they. Chicago School Economic Theory still rules, OK?
Think of the old canards that still influence much economic policy. "Trickle Down", "A rising tide floats all boats" "What's good for GM is good for everyone". People like Piketty, Stiglitz at al fight for the light but who is listening to them?

[plaques]

And who decides their pay rate? A committee of independent Executives who compare rates within their own groups. An incestuous relationship if there ever was one. All those in favor. !!! Motion passed.

[Stanley]

Quite P! All this talk about 'independence' and no mention of relationships, back room meetings or cosy dinners. I'd be a lot more comfortable if the committee was made up of a representative selection of other employees from the same company and the unions but even then you would have the possibility of coercion.

[Stanley]

I am of course in no position to criticise the bank's customer service this morning in respect of their actions re. my credit card scam yesterday but...... It took me 30 minutes to get to speak to someone and then was plagued by heavy Indian accents and gabbling despite claiming old age and deafness. I don't know whether it is just me but I have great difficulty deciphering what was said to me. I had to keep repeating what I thought I had heard back to them and asking them if I had a proper understanding. I wonder if the banks ever take this into account?

[Tizer]

Which bank is it? Is their customer service done from Asia or did it just happen to be an Asian answering your call? We find it harder to understand unfamiliar accents as we get older and we shouldn't be afraid of saying `I'm sorry but I'm having difficulty understanding you, could I please speak to someone with an English accent'. The more that we say that the greater the chance that the banks and other organisations will grasp the need for their employees to be easily understood.

[Stanley]

HSBC and all the agents I spoke to, three of them, were women and had Asian accents.

[Tizer]

Oh well, if you keep your money in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank what can you expect? (Only joking, haha )

The Telegraph this morning quotes a report that `Open Banking' will lead to more customers being scammed. They've cottoned on to what we on OG said when we first heard about it - our personal details will get distributed widely and end up escaping out into the wild. We know the banks are leaky and that personal data are very valuable. Experts are now saying that obtaining our personal information is becoming more valuable to companies than getting our money. In some transactions between companies the seller is demanding to be paid in personal data instead of money. And access to personal data is becoming a big motivation for company takeovers and mergers. Here's a US analysis of the value of personal data: LINK

[Stanley]

Add in some rogue operatives and Big Data Lives! OK? Can you remember the days when we first heard about the Echelon data gathering project and worried about our emails? Now we can worry about everything! (My Smart Meter tells the world what time I get up......)

[Stanley]

I'm hoping I might get my new card today. Until I have it I can't check the balance as the number will have changed....

[Tizer]

An article by a finance editor in The Times reminds us that `open banking' is about to begin for current accounts on 13 January with a `managed roll-out' which will complete in March 2018. It confirms that the bank can only share our data if we permit it to do so. Apparently, each time a business or app requests to share our data the bank will have to ask us if we want to allow it access. This sounds too complicated to work so I wonder if we will be allowed to give a once only NO to cover all requests? Possibly not, because there may be some cases in which if we declined it could stop our bank account functioning. We'll have to wait and see.

The article raises another issue. Will companies like Amazon and Facebook decide to act as banks once open banking makes it possible for them to access our data? This isn't as strange as it might seem. These companies have enormous amounts of cash slopping around and it would suit them to be able to lend it out and make interest. In fact, Amazon already acts as a lender to its Amazon MarketPlace traders and Facebook also lends money to some of its customers. The article also points to there being many companies that already hold large amounts of our money and would like to act as a bank. Starbucks alone holds more than £1billion of our money on pre-paid cards, so why not lend it out to make more than it does in a conventional bank? Think of those energy companies that hold oodles of our cash as credit against our bills. The distinction between banks and other businesses are going to get blurred in the coming years!

Here's something else to keep in mind if your bank invites you to partake in open banking. It will allow businesses and apps to take money directly from your bank account without going through Visa or Access. At present, if you make a payment through these card providers you are protected if something goes wrong and you can demand your money is returned. Will this protection still be available if the card companies are by-passed?

Here's more details about open banking but beware, it's a web site of the organisation promoting it: LINK

[Tripps]

Thanks for the warning . I've had a quick look - there is nothing there that I like the look of, or would bring me any improvement over the status quo. For example.

"Finding the right financial products for you – it will allow third parties (e.g. a price comparison website) to pull your spending patterns / habits from your bank, analyse them, and recommend products based on this i.e. a cheaper overdraft, a better credit card;"

If this data is of value to such a company - they should buy it from us, in a similar way that Tesco Clubcard already indirectly do, and I can choose whether to use that or not.

PS
I just noticed this little gem -

It also makes it simple for organisations to access detailed information – such as locations and opening times – on bank branches and ATMs.

That'll be an ever decreasing number of both I guess - partly as a result of initiatives like this.
I see also, that the 'Trustee' (why does they need one?), for the roll out, has a Masters degree in engineering from Cambridge. Always something to fall back on I suppose.

I think we should have a mass phone in to the customer service section of our banks, and let them know what we think of it all. Problem is they can always show us the door, and bid us farewell, and I need a bank.


Calms down and goes back to 'Judge Judy' . . . . .

[Tizer]

The author of the Times article calls herself a Millennial and says that she and her friends would be much happier to trust Amazon or Facebook with their money than the big banks. It just go to show how wide the gap is now between the generations.

[Stanley]

Thanks for the update Tiz.
Forget it, I'm with David!
Just got my credit card balance (and paid it off!) All the credits for the bum transactions have been applied.....

[Tizer]

As Victor Meldrew would say, "I just don't believe it!" On the day that `open banking' begins the bosses of big British banks are telling customers that it will leave them at the mercy of "hackers and thieves". LINK I suppose the banks are now taking this line so they can say "Not our fault, guv, we warned you this would happen" when the hacking begins. They're peeved because the open banking project was instigated by the government to make sure people could compare what different companies were offering and would be more likely to switch if their present deal was a poor one.

There's a BBC report on open banking here: LINK

[Stanley]

I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole!

[Stanley]

The elephant in the room with the Carillion affair is the ongoing problem of the reliability of mandatory audits by the big accountancy firms. I think we have enough evidence to be able to say that this is a failed system, we have seen too many examples of a 'clean bill of health' signed off by the accountants being the precursor to massive failure.
Then there is the whole question of PFI.... If the Carillion affair leads to re-examination of these matters and some long term changes it could be cheap at half the price!

[Stanley]

Carrillion. How come the banks let them get in that deep? Were they counting on government intervention or the merry-go-round lasting long enough to be able to recoup the capital in interest, fees and services? If they have made a loss on the deal, who pays? Well it be the Lords of the Universe?
In the same connection I see that the question of cosy pay deals for senior staff and dividends is being examined..... About bloody time!