Right and Wrong

Leading romantic poet, army officer and popular spokesman for Roman Emperor Augustus Quintus Horatius Flaccus once said, “A portion of mankind takes pride in their vices and pursues their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong” and little illustrates this more effectively than the current relationship between the government, the banks, their regulators and their victims.

Paralysed by potential for further unfavourable economic consequence, our government remains malleable in the hands of our unprosecutable banksters.  Discretely exploring “The Bank Confiscation Scheme for UK and US Depositors” to cover future bank bailouts, their mantra is forgive and forget in the name of economic recovery and their course is set for redirecting both the blame and the costs of the crisis onto the shoulders of the most vulnerable. Insisting the bankers lucrative history of over-zealous incentivising is merely misguided rather than criminal , our politcians and regulators have used smoke and mirrors to conceal the full extent of the banksters crimes (many of which have yet to immerge) hoping they will pass unnoticed by the silent and unsuspecting majority.

Before taking up office, David Cameron famously said, "We all know, in our hearts, that as long as there is deep poverty living systematically side by side with great riches, we all remain the poorer for it" yet this week, as a direct result of banker bailouts, “an avalanche of benefit cuts will hit the same households over and over, with no official assessment of how far this £18bn reduction will send those who are already poor, into beggary”. In contrast, financial regulators repeatedly excusing corporate criminality on the governments instruction have failed to persuade those who reaped their illicit rewards, without prosecution, to employ moral fiber to tailor their future. As a result, a culture of entitlement for failure lives on amongst the very people whose avarice sentenced millions to a lifetime of hardship.

• Libor rigging at Barclays has not thwarted the 39 million pounds received in bonuses this year, 17.5 million of which is to be received by just nine individuals.
• The money laundering of 881 million dollars for the drug trade has not resulted in a single prosecution at HSBC or at any other bank for that matter.
• Neither has sleeping at the Financial Services Authority wheel cost chief executive officer Hector Sants his knighthood.

And nor have

• HBOS, the worst bank in the world, who have refused to answer all further correspondence from me, seen fit to furnish me with the information I ask of them via my Data Subject Access Request.

I have, however received word from my newly appointed Financial Ombudsman Service adjudicator who informs he is (at long last I might add) looking forward to securing a response to my HBOS miss selling case from...

Santander!?

Quintus Horatius Flaccus also said, “It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement” and if lip service to banking reform and the reams of meaningless correspondence I have regularly had the misfortune to receive from both Halifax Bank of Scotland and the Financial Ombudsman Service is anything to go by, 

I find that Quintus Horatius Flaccus is definitely not wrong!! 

Shams and Shambles

American inventor and businessman, Thomas A. Edison, once said, “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence and honest purpose as well as perspiration” and throughout the difficulties of keeping my family afloat while dealing with the aftermath of our financial demise I have, not unlike Edison, remained convinced that a satisfactory resolution to my Halifax Bank of Scotland complaint will only be forthcoming if I remain sufficiently focused on all that is necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

Committed to the pursuit of an intelligent solution to our predicament following the collapse of our property business (2008) and the forced sale of our home (2009) I have diligently, trawled for news of government rescue packages together with banking reforms and financial regulation which might aid my endeavours. With each and every letter I have written, I have increased my understanding of the ways in which huge organisations like the FSA, the FOS and HBOS are expected to operate and familiarised myself with the guidelines by which they are supposed to abide. The by product of this has been a much broader knowledge and a substantial helping of increased confidence.

Entering the beginning of my fifth year of battle, I remain hopeful that media interest, public outrage and my own refusal to be fobbed off by bully boy banksters and their regulators will eventually combine to affect a change which alters the way in which banks have so far been permitted to treat their victims. However, despite my best efforts and the pre Christmas promises of both HBOS and the FOS with regard to my over valuation complaint, I have to concede to date I have accomplished very little and even the past few weeks spent in hot pursuit of a hearing for my HBOS complaint have done nothing to change this.

Tempered in expectation as a result of HBOS’s past performance but, nonetheless, hopeful my long overdue request of almost year might have come to fruition by 2 January 2013 (as per the deadline HBOS set for themselves) I still remain with without word or any sign of progress. Resigned to chalking up this absence of outcome to an all too predictable lack of HBOS inertia in the face of any investigation, I am doubly disappointed to find the FOS, after admitting they miss handled and delayed the investigation into my HBOS compliant early last year, have once again reneged on their assurances to affect investigative compliance from this too big to fail 41% taxpayer owned bank by not insisting they respond to my accusations within the time frame specified.  It is my belief this lack of momentum only goes to prove, despite what the government, the bankers and their regulators would have us believe;

• Rescue packages were designed to rescue the bankers and not those who are having their homes repossessed or their investments devalued
• Fines and settlements have allowed the bankers to move on but not their victims
• Banking fraud has proved a lucrative and prosecutionless pass time which has shown no moral regard for the (estimated) hundred million people it has driven into destitution and suicide
• FSA remuneration codes and EU directives do nothing to encourage banker’s to cap their earnings or persuade them to behave responsibly in the future.

And, when it comes to providing a fair and efficient method by which the individual can seek restitution in the light of these findings,

• The UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service is at best a shambles and at worst a complete sham.

Thomas Edison also said, “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways which do not work” and despite a seemingly unproductive year which includes 44 blog post, 1538 tweets, 16,000 page views together with a fair amount of fruitless endeavours in the hands of the FOS, I remain hopeful I will not discover 10,000 ways which do not work for me before I finally achieve a much needed and long awaited way forward with HBOS.

Platitudes and Placation

Financial Times Chief Economics Commentator, Martin Wolf once said, “The conclusion to be drawn from [the Bank of England’s executive director for Financial Stability Andy] Haldane's work is that an out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid” and with mounting evidence to support claims that the FSA have neither the stomach nor the inclination to prosecute banking criminality, the best that victims of the UK’s banking crisis can expect from reform is a ring side seat for an endless round of regulatory wrist slapping.

Placated with promises of integrity and more customer focused business models, the FSA have allowed the individuals within the banking fraternity (whose greed cost hundreds of thousands of UK residents their livelihoods along with their homes) to escape the consequences of their actions with little more than,

·        a smidgen of public humiliation,

·        a fraction of a single year’s bonus in fines 

·       and a marginally demeaning ban from working in the city

While retaining,

      ·        several very desirable residences,
      ·        a substantial asset based net worth
      ·        and very sizeable pensions

Despite amassing a great deal of this wealth by indulging in all sorts of elaborate chicanery-including the widespread abuse of structured investment vehicles, conduits, derivatives, securitizations and collateralized debt obligations, boost leverage, gaming the regulatory system and avoiding tax, the Peter Cummings(HBOS) and the Fred Goodwins (RBS) of this world are left to lick their meaningless wounds aggrieved at being singled out for FSA tokenism. In contrast, the victims of this banking plague of financial spider wasps are expected to suffer the blanket approach to asset stripping which followed the near collapse of our financial system and plunged the UK into four long years of economic crisis.

During this time,

       ·        UK home repossessions have averaged nearly 3000 a month

       ·        UK unemployment has risen to 2.53 million

       ·        And austerity led government cut backs in both the NHS and Benefits department continue to be hugely detrimental to the nations most vulnerable.

Yet with UK regulatory eyes seemingly fixed firmly on how best to help those who perpetrated a global financial crisis retain both their wealth, and in some cases their power without either party losing face, I fear there is little hope for those of us seeking sanctuary from the relentless pursuit of lenders who are intent on socializing their losses from the property crash they created.  It is, nevertheless, mildly encouraging to find limply legislated lip service has not been the only method by which some of the fraudulence of global banksters have been addressed.

In this month alone,

        ·        Former Anglo Irish Bank chairman and two of his senior executives are to be tried in a criminal court over banking irregularities which have cost the State 29 billion
.       ·        The United States Government has filed a fraud lawsuit against Bank of America Corporation alleging the bank cost taxpayers more than one billion in losses when they sold defective home loans to government backed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
        ·        US home owners launched a class action against banks who repossessed their homes following the calculated use of Libor manipulation to inflate mortgage repayments and affect default.

Scottish astronomer, academic and computer scientist William Samson once said, “A writer lives in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes” and while I do not deny I am regularly in a state of astonishment over the behavior of the UK's financial regulators, I cannot help but wonder how, despite widespread evidence of banking fraud and continued public outrage, banksters are slipping affluently off the hook into retirement, with the vast majority of their spoils in tact, to enjoy a life of elitist comfort completely Scot-free.

It is certainly not a future their victims can anticipate and this is reason, I write.

Stand and deliver

I have been unable to think let alone write a post for the past four days and instead have ground to a halt from both exhaustion and brain overload. To the passerby, and even to most of my friends and family, I have functioned perfectly well over the last few days while cheerfully accepting more Friends  of the school challenges. I have successfully progressed my case with the FSA regarding the Bank of Scotland and even managed to be concise and business like in my correspondence. The proverbial rabbit is always pulled out of the hat, without fail, if I have I anything to do with it! This, after all, is my talent and it is one I am well known for.

However although I continue to step up to the mark, in reality, today it is not me who is present but merely an echo. Today the enthusiastic and energetic me has been banished by the pain in my head and I am left to look on at myself in helpless defeat as I am forced to succumb to the obliteration of migraine yet again. Gripped regularly with this stress induced master who often takes as much as three days to vacate, the pain, nausea and impaired vision often reaches levels which both consume my head and weigh down each of my limbs. Each time it happens I feel sure I will be unable to cope, but inevitably I always do. For me it is the tortuous price of each success and every failure.

Unable to share my affliction with those around me, I continue to smile while preparing Sunday lunch for twelve as planned or agree with the Head attending to an extra issue will be no trouble at all. To give in to this illness is completely beyond me while hiding it existence has become the purist of art forms. Unprepared to give this uninvited interloper an introduction to the people in my life it always remains my secret until long after its departure.

Finely honed over fifty three years my methods of concealment are exemplary and for the reason I am always available, without exception, to stand and deliver.

My debt shame

Today it was my intention to recount, from the beginning, the sorry tale of our suffering at the hands of HBOS. In the belief I had sufficiently distanced myself from our financial distress and regained the strength to put pen to paper I planned to inform the Financial Services Authority and the Financial Ombudsman Service precisely what the Bank of Scotland has done and the impact it has had on my family. I woke up determined to describe, in detail, how spotting us adrift with our three young children and fully aware we were fighting for our lives aboard a sinking ship, they ignored all government guidelines and instead chose to completely remove the wind from our sails, strip us of any chance of recovery and force us onto the rocks where their appointed debt collector now persecutes us for sport.

It was my intention to explain that a former career in the financial services industry did not prepare me for the pain a "too big to fail" giant was prepared to inflict. I wanted to make sure the Financial Ombudsman Service knew I had been rendered powerless against a banking machine which was deaf to my proposals and what is more, intent on wrecking the financial future of my whole family.  I believed it should be common knowledge the Bank of Scotland was unhindered by their own codes of conduct for customers in financial distress and intent on serving their own ends regardless of the cost to my family.

I was sure I could go back to the beginning and illustrate articulately and accurately how the Bank of Scotland chose to multiply our financial difficulties ten times over and, after stripping us bare, proceeded to persecute us for being unable to reimburse them. Sadly I was unable to do any of this.
Instead, all I could do today was cry.

.