International Happiness Day

Self improvement guru, lecturer, and author of How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Brekenridge Carnegi once said, “It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it” and today, on International Happiness Day, I could not agree more.

Once devastated to the point of ill health I am relieved to say I am no longer the woman who could once be found underweight, completely bald from stress and cowering in her soon to be repossessed home. Police officers from the Armed Response Unit do not now frequent my drive to discourage angry tradesmen from laying siege and the threat of a claw hammer to my husband’s head is not what I think of when I hear a knock at my door. No more do I endure the involuntary stomach flips which used to go hand in hand with a glimpse of the postman approaching my house and neither do I answer each and every phone call with the trepidation of a woman braced for the onslaught of hard line debt collectors and their verbal abuse.

It has taken almost five years, upwards of three hundred and fifty letters, forty or more debt counselling consultations, three full blown Financial Ombudsman Service investigations, one hundred and fifty five blog posts, twenty thousand two hundred and ninety four page views,  one thousand nine hundred and ninety six tweets,  an inordinate amount of political and economic reading,  numerous phone calls, countless comments on facebook together with thousands and thousands of man hours to discover that although happiness is not dependent on what I have, where I am or what I am doing, happiness is definitely about having something to hope for.

American author and essayist Elizabeth Gilbert once said, “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it” and although financially our circumstances have remained unchanged, I am very pleased to report that by fighting, striving and insisting I have not only discovered that I have been a victim of mortgage fraud but I have also found someone who investigates financial fraud on behalf of clients trapped by the wrongdoing of lenders and their associates who is prepared to take my case.

Because of this I now most definitely have hope and it is for this reason, today on International Happiness Day, I feel truly happy!

Great Expectations

When American novelist Nicholas Sparks said, “I’ve often over-estimated what I could accomplish in a day [but] under-estimated what I could accomplish in a year” he portrayed my own expectations in the role of a one woman debt fighting machine precisely and it did not occur to I would still engaged in a battle for the facts behind my families financial demise four whole years later.

Despite a background in financial services and one hundred and thirty six years of industry experience amongst my immediate relatives, I was unable to comprehend the logic of the way HBOS chose to deal with the suffering and hardship of my family during the banking crisis of 2008. This only made me all the more determined to embark on a quest for as much information about HBOS as I could possibly lay my hands on.

At first I believed I was alone in my distress; my research soon revealed nothing could have been further from the truth. While I had been consumed by the shock of our financial demise and the effect it was having on my children, the media had been awash with the devastation bankster's criminal avarice had reaped on the global economy. Initially hoping government promised rescue packages, interest rate cuts and lenders forbearance combined with a substantial offer of rental income to service our mortgage would begin to ease our difficulties, it soon became clear HBOS had no intention of behaving with compassion or forbearance and were instead intent on recapitalising their coffers with the forced sale and repossession of many people’s residences including our own.

Once my home was no longer mine, I was convinced HBOS would, like 80% of the other banks my husband owed, write off the £217,000 shortfall created by their fire sale when I and the CAB reminded them of our dire financial circumstances. Sadly, instead relentless pursuit at the hands of their debt collectors was the route HBOS chose so, with nothing further to lose and much to the delight of the CAB, my solicitor, several good friends and some very sympathetic bankers, I decided to go public by posting my story on the Internet.

A complete newcomer to blogging little more than a year ago and now the proud recipient of 10,000 page views, I originally embarked on my social media journey to expose HBOS’ brutish behaviour. However, during my subsequent voyage of economic discovery, I realised my suffering as a result of HBOS avarice was far from an isolated incident. Endemic of a light tough regulatory banking system which rewards greed, criminality and failure with untold wealth, the list of those on the receiving end of the bankster’s big stick was all but never ending.

Disillusioned with the reluctance of the FSA, FOS and the government to get to grips with widespread banking fraud I have, over the last year, documented every irrational and often sexist remark I have encountered from Lloyds, HBOS and their regulators during my campaign for a financial future. In the process I have learned the following.

·        Resolving the banking crisis will require radical surgery and quiet determination

·        Britain ignores this wave of financial crime at its peril

And we must all,

·        Emancipate ourselves from slavery

Now, almost eighteen months since I first started writing about banking skulduggery, I am nothing short of delighted to hear the New Wilberforce Alliance has been launched to instigate change. Brain child of whistle blower Paul Moore, former head of HBOS risk management, this organisation promises to campaign for radical reform in our banking sector and a return to corporate values which embrace ecologically sound motives as well as moral ones. I wish every success to the honourable endeavours of the New Wilberforce Alliance and hope, with the help of its growing number of supporters, the volume is raised on the public’s repeated demands for a brighter and ethical future.

It is said, “When the world whispers, give up, when hope whispers, try one more time” and because I remain hopeful of a better future, not only for my family but for generations to come, Paul Moore has my whole hearted support.

One Angry Man

Maya Angelou once said, I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel and this week, despite the obligations of my hitherto clandestine occupation as debt fighter extraordinaire, I am very much hoping this observation proves to be true.

When my world fell apart as a consequence of our financial demise in 2008, it took me two years before I could communicate coherently with anyone. For this reason I remained largely out of sight from all but my immediate family and a few very close friends. All my hair fell out, I lost several stone in wait and I spent every moment of every day consumed by the horror and shame of being in debt. Each and every hour that I wasn’t required to carry out my duties of mother and housewife, I spent explaining our dire circumstances over and over again to our creditors. At the time I was incapable of being anything but consumed by our predicament.

Time has been a great healer and although we are far from out of the woods, and entirely because of the endless patience and kindness of many, many people, I have gradually emerged from a tunnel of overwhelming stress into a life which is different but far from unpleasant. The dark days of repeated panic attacks at the arrival of the postman are a memory I rarely linger on and I am proud to have pieced together a family life which provides both love and security for my children despite the back drop of a million pounds of unrecoverable debt.

Every creditor has been informed of our position and with the exception of HBOS and Lloyds all debts have been written off or are in the process of being written off. Even our beautiful apartment in Spain is due to be forcibly sold when Bankia get round to completing the sale at which point, according to both my solicitor and the bank who holds the mortgage, our community fee arrears of 12,000 Euros are to be settled in full by the bank.

While on occasion the lack of assets and the knowledge that our income remains very small saddens me, any malaise seldom persists because our children are happy and thriving in a school where I continue to work with grateful diligence as Chairman of the Friends. Whilst the head and his wife have been keen to remind me I have created an atmosphere of warmth and enthusiasm at both school events and amongst the ever increasing number of volunteering committee members, I am rewarded in the knowledge I have made a contribution, albeit not a financial one, towards to my children's education.

Despite the ongoing frustrations of my Financial Ombudsman’s Service complaint with regard to my HBOS case, my role as chairman has enabled me to move my daily focus away from obsessing about debt and instead channelled my energies into making myself useful and in so doing I have re-acquired “a life”. My email contact list bears testament to this with its one hundred and seventy three contacts and anything up to thirty incoming emails a day. Only two short years ago I had no computer and no email account,  whereas today I communicate with everyone from my children’s friend’s parents, Friends committee members, Governors, teachers, service providers for our events, through to my five children and six grand children to name but a few.

However today, in spite of my relentless determintaion to secure a safe and happy family life for my children, the very foundations of my new found stability have been rocked. Following the discovery that my email account had been hacked and was sending a link containing a virus out to all those on my contact list, I emailed everyone to warn them not to open it. Included in my alert was the wealthy volunteer chairman of the community of our apartment. Unwillingly to accept that Spanish law dictates the arrears on our community fees will be paid in full when the bank takes possession, he has chosen to send an abusive and threatening email outling his disgust at our non payment of the community fees not only to me, but also to everyone on my contact list.

It is certainly true the kindest words in all the world are the unkind words not said” but because of the unkind words born out of this malicious man’s impatience for money, I am now faced with the fact that not only has everyone I know been served a large helping of our shamefully dirty washing, but my children, along with many of their friends, their friends parents and their teachers have too.

It is four years since I discovered the extent to which my husband had borrowed in an effort to save his property business and today my head once again hangs in shame while my heart bleeds for what my children may well face on Monday morning. I can only hope the recipients of this vicious hate mail might pause to remember how I have, during my time as chairman endeavoured to make them feel, before passing judgement on our position. Either way I can only assume my family and I will need a strong stomach over the coming months as, now he has access to my contact list, I cannot imagine this will be the only time this angry man will be making use of it.

The thought of this makes me feel physically sick.

The Powerless and Corruption

George Bernard Shaw, Irish play wright and founder of the London School of Eoconomics once said, “Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power" and while I am repeatedly told by the Financial Ombudsman Service unprecedented numbers of complaints are the reason I have not yet received a ruling on whether my HBOS complaint can proceed, it is clear the fault actually lies with unprecedented incidents of banking fraud and not, as bankers would have us believe, the audacity of their victims.

While all eyes are on Barclays fraudulent actions following the US and UK regulators levy of a £290 million fine for Libor rate manipulation, it has become abundantly clear CEO Bob Diamond was not wrong when he said “how people behave when they think no one is watching” has been at the heart of his banks profitability and risk management policies for many a year. With  the news that vast funds have been repeatedly and systematically skimmed by Barclays from a plethora of global financial manoeuvres spanning as much as five years, civil suits are likely to far outstrip existing compensation payouts which are already run into billions making a regulatory fine of £290 million pale into insignificance.

By way of an explanation, our regulataors tell us a wave of Libor fiddling during the 2008 financial crisis resulted from “senior management’s” concerns that Barclays would be perceived as struggling.  Add into this mix a conversation Diamond had with Paul Tucker, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, after which at least two Barclay’s managers believed falsely adjusting Libor rates had been agreed, one can only wonder why anyone thinks Chairman Marcus Angius’ resignation along with the sacking of fourteen Barclay’s traders has resolved anything let alone emptied the Barclays barrel of its rotten apples.

With the regulatory finger finally pointing firmly in the direction of twelve other banks for similar Libor fixing crimes it is no surprise to discover Lloyds Banking Group and HBOS are amongst those within the US regulators and FSA’s sights. However, while I doubt previously exhausted Lloyds CEO Antonio Horta Osorio anticipated “bringing out their dead” in the summer of 2011would give rise to further billions being claimed in compensation for rate fixing, it is now clear it will not just be my own case which will continue to fester on HBOS and FOS desks for weeks to come while the fall out from this latest banking fraud discovery is laid to rest.

It is said corruption is authority, plus monopoly, minus transparency and while auditors have snoozed and the UK government remain complicit in their indifference to bankers crimes I, along with millions of other victims of banking avarice are left to suffer the consequences and despite public outrage both at home and abroad, unsurprisingly No. 10 are happy to announce there is to be no retrospective action taken with regard to the banks as “we can only use the law as it is and as it stands”.  Sadly, as is the case in so many instances, the law insists the loss of my financial future is too remote for there to be any recourse.

Thirty fifth US president John F. Kennedy said, “Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance” and despite the best efforts of the US and the UK regulators it is common knowledge that while nobody is above the law, power regularly makes people invisible.

It is for this reason banking crime continues pay.

Brave Hearts

American journalist and author Mignon McLaughlin once said, “Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense” and yet for those locked in financial hardship as a result of the economic crisis, suspense has remained the regime of each and every day.  

For the individual, the cavalry never came and instead government talk has continued to prove cheap. Austerity measures have been relentless and the current penchant for saving the perpetrators of the financial crisis instead of the victims has left the very people who were responsible for economic pillaging obscenely rewarded and at liberty to defend their infinitely valuable contribution to a financial future they have completely obliterated for the rest of us.

Well versed in the unchecked practices of the banking fraternity at home in the UK, it is has proved unremarkable to discover the tentacles of corporate corruption have also been busy feathering elitist nests in Spain. However, with an estimated one hundred and twenty six billion dollar euro taxpayer funded bailout in the offing, the Catalan parliament has finally seen fit to set up a committee to investigate long standing allegations of banking malpractice. These claims in include multi million euro payoffs to senior banking executives just before their banks collapsed, “hundreds of millions of loans to executives, board members and their families” and 50% executive pay increases when profits were barely 7%. Arsenio Escolar, editor of 20 Minutos believes, “If we really knew the truth about Bankia and the other Cajas, the two big parties-the People’s party and the Socialists- would explode”.

Unsurprised to discover a great many actions under investigation are those of Bankia with whom I have held a now substantially underwater mortgage for the past eight years, I remain unsure if reported levels of financial fraud are pivotal to the  manner in which they have dealt with me or merely a product of it. Either way, I remained unable to fathom why Banca Caja which now trades as Bankia and is reputed to be desperately in need of funding, has made no effort to communicate with me for a very long time.

During the past four years they have:

• Refused to allocate the payments we made into our account to cover our mortgage 
• Ignored all my communications asking why
• Refused to allow me to sell our apartment to a very keen cash purchaser 
• Ignored all my purchasers efforts to progress this sale.  
• Refused to discuss interest only loan restructuring to make us tenanting our property viable in the long term
• Ignored all correspondence from all parties on the subject including solicitors 

In addition, I am reliably informed that not only will I not be pursued for the inevitable shortfall on the sale of our Spanish property when Bankia eventually get round to it, all outstanding bills relating to it (currently 12,000 euros and rising) will also be covered by the bank in accordance with Spanish property law.

While I am naturally delighted to enjoy one less instance of suspense about which I must be brave, I can only assume operating in this manner may well result in a one hundred and twenty six billion euro bailout proving vastly insufficient to secure the rescue of an economic money pit of this magnitude. Furthermore, despite widespread belief that money talks, I suspect the people of Spain are about to find out, as have those of us enduring the purgatory of the economic crisis elsewhere that no matter how large the bailout, all money will ever say to the individual is,

 “Good-bye.”

Busy Getting Nowhere

American journalist and author Sidney J Harris once said, “The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out: communication is getting through” and while it remains abundantly clear I am still a long way off getting through to banking giants Lloyds and HBOS, I have been the recipient of a varied and plentiful supply of information from varied number of sources in the interim.

I have recently discovered,

·        Friend’s committee meetings, contrary to popular opinion, are not a forum from which to explore new ideas but instead serve purely to facilitate more of the same.

·        BT Internet hot spots, unlike their TV advertising campaign would have you believe, can only be accessed by spending a inordinate amount of time on the phone to their overseas call centre.

·       Private landlords who substantially reduce the rent are often loath to spend money on essential structural repairs to five hundred year old properties regardless of the consequences.

·        Parliamentary Ombudsmen, despite their swift reply to my consumer complaint, have completely miss-understood the nature of my grievance in the name of efficiency.

And

·        Government guidelines along with the guidelines of the Financial Ombudsman Service for banks dealing with customers in arrears, or facing repossession are completely irrelevant when the FOS assess the merits of a formal complaint.

It appears, despite my tentative forays on twitter and the plethora of information I have subsequently gleaned from all who have kindly responded to my posts, for those of us who remain locked in battle with the banks, there is still an inordinately long way to go to affect a success communication of our predicament to both the government and their banking regulators. I do, however, take some solace in the words of both American anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the twelve year old Canadian girl who quoted them when she expertly explained how banks have defrauded and robbed our economy on U-Tube this week, “Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

I sincerely hope she is correct.

Sink or Swim

In the mid 1800’s American activist, journalist and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said, “You cannot possibly have a broader base for government than that which includes all the people with all their rights and with an equal power to maintain their rights.” He was speaking in support of the emancipation of slaves at the time and, although I do not pretend to claim the banking crisis is equal in abhorrence to the plight of the twelve million Africans who were sold into slavery between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, there are definitely parallels.

Like the slave traders, there are a number of bankers worldwide who have pursued personal gain with no regard for the pain and suffering levied on others. When those enslaved by debt could no longer afford their mortgages, often as result of austerity related job losses, these bankers threw them out of their homes along with their families without a backward glance. Having systematically asset stripped the global economy to line their own pockets, this very same fraternity has maintained an aloof detachment from the cruelty their psychopathic and narcissistic actions have had on their victims. Masterfully in denial of all culpability, they have stood by while millions of homeowners (forecasters predict twenty five million foreclosures in the US alone) had both their livelihoods and their equity removed from their grasp with a single expertly placed blow.

Shackled indefinitely to mortgage shortfalls as a direct result of bank profiteering, and bullied and beaten by the banks henchmen, the individual is also expected to pay the price of the global economic crisis. In contrast the bankers are still enjoying remunerations of up to 500 hundred times that of the national average earnings. For many of those trapped in debt sentences for life, emancipation is unimaginable and with debt forgiveness out of the question, it is little wonder there has been a 36% increase in the suicide rate. Even more staggering, this figure by far exceeds the 21% increase in suicides during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Throughout the years of financial crisis help for those paying the consequences has definitely not been at hand. The UK government and their regulators have paid little more than lip service to the much needed rescue packages promised to those experiencing mortgage distress while news of a further drop in share price for many of the “too big to fail” UK banks following the announcement of two billion dollars in losses at “too complicated to control”JP Morgan only serves to highlight how little has changed since the onset of the global recession.

While the Greeks and the Spanish struggle to reach any solution at all, newly elected French prime minister, Francoise Hollande may well have had the task firmly in his sights when he stated, “My principal adversary has no name, it has no face, and it does not belong to a political party, it has never presented its candidature and has never been elected but it still governs. This adversary is the world of finance” but, encouraging as his words are, he too has yet to deliver.

However, in the US, it appears the tide may at last be turning.

Distressed homeowners with underwater mortgages and more than two months of arrears are to receive aid in the form of principal reduction in an effort to enable them to stay in their homes. After year long government negotiations the banks in question hope to avoid 850 million dollars of penalties by financing a rescue package for the individual which not only avoids the huge costs and the heartache of foreclosure, but helps those in difficulties get back on their feet. Although some would say the twenty five billion dollars set aside to implement this is still not enough and the banks have, once again, got off lightly, it is a far cry from the heartless foreclosure policies of the UK’s banking industry.

Delighted to hear our American cousins are soon to benefit from the support of a government prepared to take some of their errant bankers to task, I cannot help but wonder why a similar settlement has proved impossible to arrange for sufferers of negative equity mortgages here in the UK. Had this been the case when I was in the grips of repossession at the hands of HBOS, my story would have been very different to that which I tell now.

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States once said, “When people fear the government there is tyranny: when the government fear the people there is liberty” and hearing these words I am left wondering what future can we in the UK can expect when it blatantly obvious that our government lives in fear of the banks.                                                                                                               

Waste alot, Want alot

America’s Ethel Grodzin Romm once said, “What could our worst enemy do to damage this strong and beautiful country? He could do no better than to get us to squander our human and natural resources on dubious missions and then trick us into plugging our ears against the howls of those who object” and when Ken Costa openly said, "Anyone familiar with banking and finance will know that it is completely impossible to legislate out bad practise" it is difficult not to assume his condoning words are designed to encourage us to plug our ears to the public outcry at proposals to pay bonuses for failure and persuade us to discard the messy process of bringing the criminal actions of errant executive bankers to account.

Thankfully Lloyds banking groups CEO Antonio Horta Osorio and, after much media attention, RBS CEO Stephen Hester, have both seen fit to decline the proposed million pound bonuses which were heading their way from their largely tax payer owned employers. Their actions may well be the first chink of light at the end of a well established self serving banking tunnel of personal reward which not only highlights the importance of moral accountability within our corporations but clearly illustrates responsible capitalism can never be responsible if the people at the top are not. Although the banks remain an easy target when it comes to double standards, remuneration excesses and the squandering of tax payers money, I can’t help but find myself equally outraged at the news brought home by my husband regarding a recent Marks and Spencer’s initiative.

While I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of all things retail, I cannot begin to understand how M & S can, against a back drop of real hardship for many individuals caught up in the fall out of an ongoing global recession and in spite of their staff's willingness to run it for free, truly believe it is best practise to terminate the nightly waste sale of unsold food to their employees. Instead they now insist these very same people render unsold produce inedible before assigning it to land fill, or at best animal feed and compost. The impact of being unable to purchase discounted produce for their families will undoubtedly be hugely detrimental to every M & S employee but, above all else, it is immoral to squander food in this way.

With mounting evidence that irresponsible capitalism lives on in the majority of our banks as well as in retail giant Marks and Spencer’s too, it is no surprise to discover M&S executives remain deaf to protests of those of us who object. It appears English writer Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) was correct in his belief that written words are “the only riches our posterity cannot squander” because it seems, as a race, we are collectively doing pretty well when it comes to the squandering of everything else.

A declaration of independence

While sitting in my aga heated kitchen on a dull debt clouded spring day I learned  from a very good friend that posting my thoughts on Blogger might bring me one step closer to writing a book. Armed with her encouraging words and a short lesson in how to publish a post, I now plan to tell my story in the hope it may reach those who wish to listen.

Today is the day on which I declare there is more to me than mere stay at home wife and mother. One day very soon I shall tell my tale and in doing so reveal precisely what has happened.