Maybe you should take the time to read the rest of the thread....

The general perception, true or not, is that banks and bankers are worse than most other industries.

I think the rip off factor is just more overt in finance related industries as that is their only raison d'etre - to take money off people. I suppose the reductionist could say that that is all any business is about, though. Which is probably true.

But there are many sectors that are not about that - public service, police, medicine in some countries, nursing, most professions allied to health, teaching etc etc. It probably stands to reason that there are less cads in those fields than in banking or other business, as the motivation for entering the field in the first place is not the same.

However, there are good and bad in every walk of life and that's a fact. I'm sure it would be possible to do a study of sorts to look at conviction rates in various industries for various offenses - it would be interesting to see the results of that particular study....

Well, as it's The Bar, I'll put a sixpence in the jukebox. http://www.smileys4me.com/getsmiley.php?show=2738



Maybe Pride Germination from Zimbabwe can help - they know all about inflation over there.
(The video is snowflakes on a cobweb - completely irrelevant!)

Inflation - too much money chasing too few goods, so increase the prices. Or, reduce the wages - same effect.
The difference between the two, as I understand, are the different effects on the value of a country's currency, decided by the 'government' and the finance sector lobbying it.

Yes, dead right to say that.
I think throughout here (my posting anyway) 'bank' and 'banking profession' always means 'those board directors responsible for how a bank behaves within the community in which it operates'.

Thanks for the book recommendations; there seem to be a few Boomerang editions, so at least this author is making a decent living.

Would you credit it! Top of the news today in the UK is the latest scandal for which there is a report from the UK FSA.
Yep, this refers to the "infamous" credit debt swops (CDS) which apparently hardly anyone understood when they were mis-sold by banks, to businesses.
It is reported that this one will be much bigger than that of PPI, mentioned here earlier, in monetary terms alone.
And it will keep the lawyers and courts busy for a while. :innocent:

Some of the pundits on the news are calling the financial products "interest rate swops" but the way they are discussed indicates that they are one and the same thing as CDSs.
It is alledged that up to 90% of those sold to businesses were "mis-sold" but I haven't heard any clear definition of what that is - maybe in this day and age, if you don't understand what you are doing but you go ahead and do it anyway then you are a victim??
?c?

Incidentally, I had similar thoughts about musical chair games and "the emperor has no clothes" fables, but also the game of pass the parcel = someone ends up holding the parcel when the music stops.
The latter seems to be the essence of the whole CDO/CDS saga.
It was also a process of passing the risk contained in bad debts back to those who originally borrowed from the banks, thus closing the loop of "passing the parcel".

Inflation, is by definition, an increase in the cost of goods and services, which are determined only partially by wages, and mainly by other factors (competition, raw materials, duties, regulations, etc.). If you freeze, or even reduce wages, it would therefore have only very limited effect on inflation, and such effect would not be "masking" inflation, but reducing it to some degree.

Those parties directly affected by this mis-selling are organised it transpires:-
Bully-Banks Supports Businesses Who Were Mis-Sold IRSAs - Interest Rate Swap Agreements by Rogue Banks
The bullet points in the highlights on the main page of this web link summarise the way these financial products were foisted onto businesses.

And for anyone who has read this far there is plenty of further explanation within the press, such as:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/r...and-banks.html
Interestingly, the posts at the end of that article cover just about every range of opinion that has been expressed in here to date.

Talk tough or act tough?
 

Well, I, for one, am following every word that it is uttered by the UK government about banking, and the latest is:-
BBC News - Osborne backs break-up of banks that fail to reform

Tonight, the representative (chief exec I think he is) of the British Bankers' Association (BBA) was quite agitated about "the electrification of the ring fence" (see the link for the context).
I surmise that the government is not protecting this sector in the way that the banks would prefer, but time will tell.

During interview, the BBA guy openly accepted their responsibility and complicity for fiddling the LIBOR and the government intention is that the British taxpayer does not pay the fines that are on the way for those involved on both sides of the Atlantic - in a separate media item this was summarised as some 20 banks located in 3 countries which conspired to commit criminal fraud.
Along the way, it is reported that Lloyds' bank has broken ranks from the BBA.

We live in interesting times.

I was going to write a long winded post on this however this video sums it all up!!!


The BEST speech by ANY protester EVER - at occupy wall st (End The Fed) - YouTube

I recently read a suggestion for investment:

Precious metals
Agriculture
Commodities
Energy

and related stocks.

To that I would add property - should hold some.
Dividend paying stocks.

Some advisers recommend the Troy Trojan fund to preserve your capital which holds divi stocks, gold and some hedged positions.

That's if anyone has any spare money, that is....

Well, put simply, they don't have to provide anyone with financial advice. In the UK it is a highly controlled function to do so (and I guess it is the same anywhere else in the world).
The question, earlier, was where to place savings for the highest return at minimum (or even nil??) risk.
That is a wide open question because it depends on your attitude to risk which itself is a topic that comes up in the HUBB quite regularly.
For a better return on investment you could search/google for "peer to peer" lending which is something akin to the link I posted earlier -- one more time:-
Your Savings | Burnley Savings and Loans
Basically a classic case of taking more risk for higher reward because this is an unregulated market.

Another view of what is going on regarding savings here in the UK can be found here for anyone who is interested.
UK Campaign to Protect Savings and Pensions » Save Our Savers

Personally, I haven't felt insulted by any of the posts in here; there have been some good explanations of how the banking system works, mixed in with some very zealous defence of the system; the latter I don't agree with, but we can all differ.
Today, I am pretty despondent about the news here! It has been one long litergy of placing blame on "the system" and, therefore (incredibly) no one can be held accountable/responsible - in this case I am referring to the UK health care system (the NHS), but the banking saga continues at the same time.
e.g. so far 3 individuals have been arrested in connection with the London Inter Bank Offer Rate (Libor) scandal but the police investigations continue and more arrests are almost certain.

footnote:
This current "thing" of blaming the system is like blaming the Titanic ship for hitting the iceberg - it's all the fault of the lump of metal called the Titanic and nothing to do with those who were operating the ship at the time, or those who designed it, or the ship owners who commissioned the design, or those bankers who financed it for that matter (!!!)

The system exists as it is so that individuals can avoid being blamed. That is why everything is done by committees and boards.

The incompetent and crazy management of the NHS is THE major reason why I no longer work in the UK; they made it next to impossible for me to do even a half decent job and I couldn't live with that. Whilst things are not perfect in my current environment, I can at least get stuff done for people with minimal hassle.

It's all the fault of the system
 

Then you'll understand the essence of this report:-
Mid Staffs sketch: How do you strike off a system? - Telegraph

The punchline is in the final sentence.

I guess this principle applies in all service sectors nowadays - banking, police, health, etc etc but now we have the food supply issue and, suddenly, those involved in the system can be held to blame for what we end up eating.

I think it was said earlier in this thread; the buck never stops with the present day politicians.

The issue continues (let's face it, this is not going away for many many years, if ever in the case of the UK) and now Gods' representative in England has spoken:-
Banks - ITV News
He hasn't said too much in fact, but the new Archbish is an ex-oil industry exec so he has a background of commercial activity to temper his new role:-
""The new Archbishop of Canterbury criticised Mr Osborne's banking approach Credit: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire/Press
The former oil industry executive said evidence made it clear that large, complex banks were not only "too big to fail, they are too big to manage".

However, the Chancellor defended a system based on "a small group of absolutely colossal banks" - including the mainly state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland.""

While I'm here (travelling a bit now that the daylight is returning to the northern hemis) I like this contribution and I've added a few comments, in red, since I can't remember how to do multiple quotes. :innocent:
[QUOTE=McCrankpin;409605]Someone up above says "I would like to think that this thread will be of some use to the youthful individuals among us - including those who come to view this in the future....."
Well, by the time I've read this far, I've lost track of who said what to whom about what in response to which posting.
But it's certainly entertaining, what the bar's for, so here goes....
Mine's a pint of sarsaparilla bier
Yep, that was me and I still consider that the lessons in this thread, for all of us, are immense.
While agreeing that there are good and bad in all professions, it seems to me that the de-regulation of the finance industry in the 70s/80s allowed those bankers with greed as their main motivation to completely swamp the honest professionalism of the rest. The UK government at the time were warned of exactly this possibility, but warning Maggie Thatcher of 'unintended consequences' was not fashionable in any part of society and was rumoured to be a hanging offence. It's not for nothing that the moniker "SWMBO" entered just about every language on earth.
(Yes, I'll be at Trafalgar Square the first Saturday).

It became so bad that a whole country's complete banking system collapsed, a timely reminder on today's BBC news:
BBC News - Icesave: Icelandic government wins compensation ruling
"Icesave, run by the Icelandic Landsbanki, collapsed in 2008 along with all of Iceland's banking system."
I don't think any western country has ever had a complete collapse of, say, health care, energy distribution, education, police etc.
Precisely so, the whole sector is too central to a country's well being which is not the same thing as creating "wealth". We don't all come into contact with the police, nor even the education system for the whole of our lives and even the health system is not needed for individuals for most of their time, but banking, well it's universal in any society.

As far as I know, no other profession was stripped of so much basic regulation, checks and balances, as the finance industry. And human nature being what it is, we see the results today.
Yes, 'regulators' were appointed and put in place, by the government. Expensive and useless, it's taken a few years for the FSA to lie down and die at last. Will anything else do a better job?
Probably not. Governments these days are controlled by a huge lobby industry, one of the fastest-growing industries I think. And who has the cash to pour into that industry? The bailed-out banking industry.
Like a daisy-chain?

I would ask, if the banking industry is so fundamental to the well-being of humankind within our current system of capitalism and eternal consumer growth (and I think it is), why isn't it one of the most tightly regulated industries?
Like, say, the nuclear industry, civil engineering (or any other engineering), medicine, and air transport?
A good question and I don't have a good answer to this one; how much regulation is required and BY WHOM??
It seems that no other chain-reaction misdemeanour (committed by however few people) in any other major profession has touched the lives of so many people worldwide. Perhaps the tobacco industry, and the foreign policies of large countries, get close.
As above, it is universal. We don't all smoke and need the medics to sort us out, we don't all consume alcohol and need the medics to sort us out, nor do we all exist in a state of warfare brought about by foreign policy, but banking .....



Don't get me started on this new pile of corruption... Oh, you already did!

Yep, the UK news continues to drag the skeletons out of lots of cupboards, but that is the best reason I know not to let the bankers off the hook.

Oh forgive me I missed this . . .

Insults ? Here's a request - I'm waiting for my apology. I insulted no one.

Advice - "Wise men don't need it. Fools don't heed it."

That said - cash is King. A few currencies look particularly vulnerable to reduced valuations. Do YOUR homework. Or consult a banker.

Here's a suggested way to find an honest banker.
It was told to a German friend of mine who was thinking of buying a home in the south of Spain, a few years ago, right when it was discovered that most recently-built homes were illegal and had to be bulldozed.
She was looking for a real-estate lawyer she could trust to do an honest transaction with a seller who really owned the home and the land.

Local Spanish friends told her:
"Go and live in the area you're interested in. Visit the local church. Go to mass on Sundays. Chat to the priest. Get to know the congregation for a couple of months. When you've become accepted as a member of the congregation, ask if any lawyers are members. That way you may find an honest one.... maybe - quizás."

Yep, do LOTS of homework. Maybe this approach will get you good advice, from a banker as well as a lawyer....