American industrialist and pioneer of the assembly
line process Henry Ford once said, “Speculation is only a word covering the
manipulation of prices instead of the supply of goods and services” and with an
ever lengthening list of criminal practices assembling on the global
doorsteps of our errant bankers, it is easy to believe dubious business initiatives embracing a sales rather than service culture have been the modus
operandi by which the banking elite have manipulated their way into a life of
excess and affluence.
Yet, after decades of the exploitation of financial deregulation to secure profits at any price, CBI chief John Crickland is keen to point out now is not the time to seek payback
for all those who have fallen foul of this relentless reign of economic
plundering. Instead he believes we
should focus on how best to prevent this legacy of banking fraudulence from coming
home to roost. Not only is he calling for legislation to place time limits on
claimants who have been miss sold PPI but he also believes people who have
suffered Libor related losses should be legislatively discouraged from bringing
cases against the culprits for fear the costs of compensation will be
impossible to deliver.
However, seemingly unperturbed by either lobbyists worries or
recent reports that sixty six billion pounds of bank bailout debt is unlikely
ever to be repaid, some of the very same individuals who condoned both Libor manipulation and the miss selling of ever increasing numbers of financial
products are still, with the endorsement of their regulators and the law, misrepresenting
their forty billion pound toxic loan books to disguise their losses while enjoying sizable rewards
for failure. Furthermore, despite austerity led postponement of UK retirement dates
along with reduced pension incomes (current and future) for the majority, these
morally challenged individuals are also to have a comfortable share of a
combined pension fund amounting to in excess of one hundred and four million pounds. Fortunately for them a sum of this magnitude will provide individual annuities
of several hundred thousand pounds of indexed retirement income per year.
In contrast, all
I can show for the past four years of endless communication with a bank
which has already been fined 3.5 million pounds for the miss handling of 45% of
its complaints, is £500 in compensation from the Financial Ombudsman for their
own miss handling of my case and a half page letter from HBOS advising me they are
finally about to investigate my miss sold mortgage.
However, if regulators remain adamant it is both difficult and inappropriate to prosecute banksters for their crimes and legislation continues to find ways to favor them above me, in the absence of resorting to getting those responsible round the throat and attempting to throttle the life out of them, I suspect it is will prove increasingly necessary for me to tweak my game.
To this end I plan to,
- Contact Hilary Messer of RPW solicitors to explore the benefits of a mortgage miss selling class action
- Speak to a mortgage miss selling claims firm to discuss both my eligibility and how best to quantify loss
And
- Compile a list of "fictional" characters from the banking world on which to base my book.
Foundling father and third President of the United
States Thomas Jefferson once said, “The glow of one warm thought is to me worth
more than money” and despite enduring overwhelming frustration and a great deal of heartache at the hands of both the Halifax Bank of Scotland and the Financial Ombudsman Service, I must
admit this last thought has left me feeling I know exactly what President Jefferson means.
Here's hoping some of my readers may be prepared to help me dish
the dirt!
