Literature, Legacies and Legislation

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! 

Unequal Shares

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the US, once said, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If [we] ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs,”  and if the 8,500 mortgage litigation cases against them are anything to go by, HBOS and Barclays are about to prove Jefferson’s words of warning  are correct.

A recent report warns banking giants Barclays and HBOS may well have to reimburse their customers for charges amounting to hundreds of millions. This is because HBOS’s and Barclays' shared appreciation mortgages, which offer an interest free capital sum in exchange for seventy-five percentage of the borrower’s equity, have harvested vast rewards for the bank at wholly excessive expense to the mortgagees. Some homes have appreciated by £300,000 in the 10 years since the loans were made meaning homeowners have had to pay more than £200,000 on loans as little as £25,000. These products were designed and targeted at low income customers who were quite often elderly and have proved doubly lucrative for the lenders because properties values were in the doldrums when many of these products were sold. This gave the banks the perfect window of opportunity to acquire a  substantial slice of an often vulnerable individual’s future equity for a minimal outlay throughout the depressed years of property growth during the 1990’s.

Hilary Messer of RWP solicitors is waiting for more people to come forward before she brings this proposed class action formally to the attention of HBOS, Barclays and the courts but it cannot have made it any easier for those Barclays shareholders aware of this pending lawsuit to know there could be a demand for a further 850 million pounds on top of the ongoing costs of the PPI claims and the impact of the government bailouts. Neither can it help to be made aware that less than half of Barclay’s chief executive Bob Diamond’s pay packet is to be growth related. Little wonder so many shareholders were vocal in their discontent to discover Bob Diamond is to enjoy a 2.7 million bonus on top of his 1.35 million salary in addition to the 5.7 million he has already received to cover his tax bill. However, it must have been nothing short of incendiary to find Barclays staff bonuses of 2.25 billion pounds in 2011 were triple the 730 million pounds paid out in dividends to share holders.

While David Cameron says the lack of economic recovery is, “very, very, disappointing” and Ed Milliband blames the present governments “catastrophic”  polices and lack of meaningful banking reform, it is clear from the actions of Barclays and HBOS they remain blissfully detached from the effect the first double dip recession we’ve had since the 1970’s and the impact it is having on the rest of us. Instead their executives continue to feather their own nests and, in the case of the Bank of Scotland, attempt to paper over the cracks with an advert created  by London-based advertising agency RKCR/Y&R and developed “to reassert traditional values”. It tells us, “You never know what is going to be round the corner, or what twists and turns life is going to take.” I beg to differ. I have always found past performance to be a reasonable indicator of what’s on the cards for the future and in the case of HBOS and Barclays it is clearly going to be more of the same. It is because of this my personal battle with LLoyds and HBOS is destined to be a long one as is, I suspect, any hope of economic recovery.

Thomas Jefferson also said, “It is error alone which needs the support of the government while truth can stand by itself” and sadly for us, it seems he’s right again.