I HATE banks
- Thread starter Teki187
- Start date
Just watch BBC news, they had breaking news that most banks were not passing on the lowering of the base rate.
yep, that's basically it (I doubt they have all passed on the last rate decrease!), and don't forget they have swallowed billions of 'tax payers' money' as well (some of which is earmarked to cover bonuses) and which we have to pay back with interest
sorry if this makes you feel even worse
Last edited:
surely lowing the interest rate is bad for all of us with savings rather than debt?
be sides if you where a store and the cost of buying your supplies dropped could you drop prices too?
unless you needed the edge over the competition, it would be far more intelligent to just sit and enjoy you're extra profits.
A company doesn't need to be "good" and throw money away at the people, that money belongs to the share holders, want some of it? go buy some shares.
When the banks borrow money they don't do it at the base rate. They borrow at the Libor(London interbank offered rate) rate which is currently over 6%. Until that drops, you wont see any saving passed on to the customer. They simple can't afford to do so.
Just seen that. Good news for me (if rates don't go up again) as I'll likely be on Abbey's SVR mortgage next year - the only problem is that Abbey didn't cut their rates at all when rates were previously cut by half a percentage point.
There will be new tracker deals available again soon.
Some of us are saving, so would rather keep the rates up. Its not ALL about people with debt.
Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2003
- Posts
- 3,356
- Location
- South North West
I'm flogging a dead horse here, but a few important points at a critical time in the UK's history...
1) The cheap money recently pumped into banks by the BoE was not money instantly available to lend. It was money desperately needed to stop the banks going bankrupt! They have to keep a certain amount of money in reserve or they are technically insolvent. At the moment most banks here still have to build their reserves further (to prepare for forthcoming defaults on loans they are already committed to) rather than reducing existing rates or lending more money.
2) Because we in the UK insist on buying new TVs every month (or at least video cards
instead of saving significant amounts (~10% of salary), banks have to go abroad to borrow money.
There used to be millions of Asians prepared to save hard so their banks could lend to us so we could get cheap mortgages. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE. History, finito, kaput, gorn, shuffled off this mortal coil. They are ex-lenders, and no amount of nailing them to the financial perch will encourage them to throw good money after bad. Their own economic outlook as exporters is now gloomy so they're hardly likely to be willing to lend their reserves to our banks, to lend to us, to prop up our stupidly high house prices.
3) Most financial pundits and politicians are currently hiding the harsh truth from you, because that's their job... to try and be positive. The 1.5% interest rate cut (a 33% cut remember!) is a massive "SLOW DOWN!" warning sign on the fiscal motorway. In the mist ahead there is a huge pile-up, and we are still heading towards it far too fast. The interest rate cut is not a reason to rejoice or to see how much money we'll save. It's a reason to batten down the hatches and prepare yourselves and those you love for some very difficult times indeed.
Don't criticise the banks so easily. They just gave us the rope... we hung ourselves as a nation. We were, on the whole, happy to play the borrowing game while the sun shone and everything in the garden looked rosy. Now the endless cheap fertiliser is gone, and the roses are wilting. It's time to prune, and prune back hard before systemic disease sets in.
For me the situation was typified by that woman on BBC news last night. What did she say? Something like 'we have a right to those cuts'. Something similar anyway. We have a right to absolutely nothing. Borrowed money is on the banks' terms, not ours, and certainly not the governments. If the banks can't afford the cuts, then they simply won't happen. And even if they do, that just leaves the banks weaker, instead of stronger. That makes more taxpayer injections even more likely, so we'll end up paying more whether its in our mortgage payments now or our tax bills for the next twenty years.
These are very difficult times. But crying over the spilt milk will not clean it up.
Andrew McP
1) The cheap money recently pumped into banks by the BoE was not money instantly available to lend. It was money desperately needed to stop the banks going bankrupt! They have to keep a certain amount of money in reserve or they are technically insolvent. At the moment most banks here still have to build their reserves further (to prepare for forthcoming defaults on loans they are already committed to) rather than reducing existing rates or lending more money.
2) Because we in the UK insist on buying new TVs every month (or at least video cards
instead of saving significant amounts (~10% of salary), banks have to go abroad to borrow money.There used to be millions of Asians prepared to save hard so their banks could lend to us so we could get cheap mortgages. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE. History, finito, kaput, gorn, shuffled off this mortal coil. They are ex-lenders, and no amount of nailing them to the financial perch will encourage them to throw good money after bad. Their own economic outlook as exporters is now gloomy so they're hardly likely to be willing to lend their reserves to our banks, to lend to us, to prop up our stupidly high house prices.
3) Most financial pundits and politicians are currently hiding the harsh truth from you, because that's their job... to try and be positive. The 1.5% interest rate cut (a 33% cut remember!) is a massive "SLOW DOWN!" warning sign on the fiscal motorway. In the mist ahead there is a huge pile-up, and we are still heading towards it far too fast. The interest rate cut is not a reason to rejoice or to see how much money we'll save. It's a reason to batten down the hatches and prepare yourselves and those you love for some very difficult times indeed.
Don't criticise the banks so easily. They just gave us the rope... we hung ourselves as a nation. We were, on the whole, happy to play the borrowing game while the sun shone and everything in the garden looked rosy. Now the endless cheap fertiliser is gone, and the roses are wilting. It's time to prune, and prune back hard before systemic disease sets in.
For me the situation was typified by that woman on BBC news last night. What did she say? Something like 'we have a right to those cuts'. Something similar anyway. We have a right to absolutely nothing. Borrowed money is on the banks' terms, not ours, and certainly not the governments. If the banks can't afford the cuts, then they simply won't happen. And even if they do, that just leaves the banks weaker, instead of stronger. That makes more taxpayer injections even more likely, so we'll end up paying more whether its in our mortgage payments now or our tax bills for the next twenty years.
These are very difficult times. But crying over the spilt milk will not clean it up.
Andrew McP
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Because they are in business.
Then put your money in a box under the bed and stop crying.
It's a conspiracy, they control the WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!1111onepenguin
*covers self in tin foil and prays to the lizardy gods*
Never mind the fact that they are a business and in the job of making money, something which they have not been doing recently due to huge amounts of writedowns due to the US market...
*covers self in tin foil and prays to the lizardy gods*
Never mind the fact that they are a business and in the job of making money, something which they have not been doing recently due to huge amounts of writedowns due to the US market...
Businesses are all the same, why do you just single out the banks?
What about the energy companies still charging the same even though oil has dropped. Also same can be said for petrol forecourts, they still charge a lot higher than the cost of the fuel itself.
What about the energy companies still charging the same even though oil has dropped. Also same can be said for petrol forecourts, they still charge a lot higher than the cost of the fuel itself.
What all the "banks are businesses, they should do whatever they like" people are forgetting is that mortgages are loans for people's homes - people don't generally default on mortgages unless they are really desperate because of the huge emotional attachment to the asset.
Repossessions don't really benefit anyone, often the banks will sell the repossessed property very cheaply, which further affects the value of their remaining assets and still leaves them with an unpaid debt that is considerably easier for the debtor to get out of. If banks stick to their policy of keeping mortgages expensive (for short-term profit - where have we heard that before?
) then it stands to reason that more people will be unable to make their repayments. In the real economy, we are all talking about sticking close to our customers and modifying our products according to their rapidly changing needs - isn't it time the banks learnt some good business lessons from the real economy and looked at the big picture for a change?
Ultimately the banks and mortgage holders are in this mess together, the only way we can get ourselves out of it is by working together.
Repossessions don't really benefit anyone, often the banks will sell the repossessed property very cheaply, which further affects the value of their remaining assets and still leaves them with an unpaid debt that is considerably easier for the debtor to get out of. If banks stick to their policy of keeping mortgages expensive (for short-term profit - where have we heard that before?
) then it stands to reason that more people will be unable to make their repayments. In the real economy, we are all talking about sticking close to our customers and modifying our products according to their rapidly changing needs - isn't it time the banks learnt some good business lessons from the real economy and looked at the big picture for a change?Ultimately the banks and mortgage holders are in this mess together, the only way we can get ourselves out of it is by working together.
Last edited:
so?
can't afford it, don't buy it.
Oh noes the person is "desperate", do you work for free?
Besides **** the people I want a decent dividend.
Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2003
- Posts
- 3,356
- Location
- South North West
Not true. They put downward pressure on prices which is a good thing for *everyone* except speculators and BTLers with 'pyramid scheme' property empires.
I understand what you're saying, but there are plenty of properties out there to rent, especially inner city flats. People may be inconvenienced by repossession, or forced to live in properties smaller than they'd like, but it is not the end of the world. It may even be the best thing that ever happens to many people who -- as in the USA -- were sold properties they couldn't really afford.
Propping up the status quo artificially does nobody any favours. You can have pain now in repossessions, or pain later in taxation, but it's still pain whenever it comes.
Andrew McP