Roman economist, lawyer and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said,”
There is no sanctuary so holy that money cannot profane it, no fortress so
strong that money cannot take it by storm” and while bonus pots continue to
unashamedly reward the untouchables for their ever increasing list of banking failures,
it is no surprise to find the words of this ancient Roman theorist still ring
uncomfortably true.
Reputedly focused only on electoral gain, Cameron and Osborne do nothing
to bring our elitist banking fraudsters to account while regulatory figure
heads Turner and Wheatley prefer to promote the fallacy that the dirty deeds of
banking avarice are but a distasteful memory of the unregulated past. In
preference to making use of the laws of incorporation to the secure the prosecution of those who chose
to serve themselves at the expense of the majority, banking losses remain
socialized while those who condoned them keep the wealth their dishonesty has afforded them.
In contrast, the opportunities to
seek recompense for those who fell foul of this culture of miss selling and
manipulation are limited by way of cut backs to legal aid and the withdrawal of
funding to charitable organisations such as the CAB. Yet, driven by the terror
of an alternative which could herald the breakdown of the current financial
system (not to mention the loss of influential friends and their much valued
votes) our two faced politicians have left the victims of this criminal banking
culture abandoned and defenseless in the jaws of their oppressors. As one would
expect the ongoing governmental trend to pretend and placate the voters
rather than address the root cause of the banking crisis, has done nothing to deter the
same self serving and morally bereft people who now insist
that lessons have been learned.
In the real world it is business as usual for the bankers and despite
much talk about plans to serve both the economy and the customer, the
long suffering individual is still being persecuted and bullied into untenable
submission. The cases below represent the tip of a huge iceberg which is
unlikely to feature on any politician or regulator's radar because, unlike powerful
corporations with budgets for legal and financial advice, the individuals
concerned have once again been hung out to dry having been left with no
alternative but to succumb to the whims of the all powerful banks demands and then crawl away to seek some quiet solitude in order to lick their wounds. This is because many
have neither the stomach , the knowledge or the means by which to stand up to
the wanton disregard of the banking fraternity they are forced to deal with.
Over the past few months I have discovered;
HSBC, who laundered 600 million in drugs money and paid only the
equivalent to a few weeks profit in fines as a consequence, are unprepared to
renegotiate the terms of a 15% LTV mortgage of an employed professional woman,
and a mother of three, who cannot make ends meet now her husband has been
sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She has never missed a payment and had originally planned to repay
her loan in five years time. She has been told by HSBC she has no alternative
but to sell her beloved family home of twenty years as quickly as possible.
HFC, a key offender in the miss sold PPI scandal, have repeatedly told a
chronically ill widow that her 30% LTV mortgage must be repaid in full. She has
been advised her mortgage cannot be rescheduled (her husband died
without sufficient life assurance to repay the loan) despite having made every payment in full every month for twenty
years and a guarantee from her pension provider confirming she can afford to
continue to pay. She is faced with the unpalatable prospect of
selling her lovingly restored home as quickly as possible.
Barclays, who made a healthy profit from the manipulation of LIBOR rates, repeatedly
told an 85 year old woman who believed she had purchased a lifetime mortgage at 20% LTV that she would have to repay the outstanding
balance on her mortgage with immediate effect or face the ordeal of the bank
applying to the courts to take possession of her home. On attempting to initiate
a formal complaint she was told it was unlikely to be dealt with until after
her house had been forcibly sold.
And,
HBOS, who have earned themselves the reputation of being the worst bank in the world , unnecessarily forced the sale on my home rather
than allow me to rent it to cover my mortgage payments, spent the past four and
half years telling me a woman has no right to be informed separately from her
husband about mortgage arrears if her husband is already in discussion with them
and, having made use of a fictitious purchase price and purchase date in order
to over value my home and sell me a mortgage in the first place, now tell me the discovery of these falsified facts has nothing to do with them. Furthermore, in true HBOS bully boy
fashion, I have received two demands from their debt collections agency despite HBOS’s own acknowledgement that they understand my case is currently under investigation by the
Financial Ombudsman Service.
French enlightenment writer, historian, philosopher and master of wit,
Voltaire, once said, “I have only made but one prayer to God, a very short one:
O Lord make my enemies ridiculous, and God granted it” and if recent events are
anything to go by, ridiculous enemies appear not to be the exclusive domain of
Voltaire!
