Posts, Mail and Shots

Franklin D Roosevelt once said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have little” and while reports continue to illustrate the extent to which bankers avarice for their obscene levels of remuneration have infected and disabled moves towards regulatory change across the globe, I have embarked on a campaign to increase my readership in a bid to raise awareness of the impact their actions have had on the individual. With little more than a years experience as a writer and next to no knowledge of the Internet, social media sites or forums, this decision has taken me way beyond my comfort zone.

Over the past two weeks I have,

·        Signed up to, commented on and posted my blog on numerous articles relating to the economic recession.

·        Sent 562 tweets on my hitherto unused twitter account to a variety of recipients together with a link to my blog.

·        Applied to several different sites inviting writers to post pieces with a view to linking them to my blog

·        Explored Avatars, Gravatars, badges along with all things Google in order to improve the access to my blog

·        Posted new threads and links to my blog on Mumsnet in an effort to acquire information about the ongoing issues I have with HBOS.

Throughout this two week period, I have been filled with trepidation at the potential for abusive responses to my unsolicited “mail shot”.

I am delighted to be able to report the following.

I have,

·        Been invited to write a piece for Women Writers for September 2012

·        Acquired twenty one new and communicative followers on twitter

·        Heard from three separate individuals who are also suffering at the hands of HBOS

·        Tripled the number of people who have read my blog in previous months

·        Received three very supportive comments and expressions of encouragement with respect to my posts on Mumsnet

However, I have also received,

·        My first block, ever, from a former banker for “sending her spam”.

·        Had a post deleted from the Mumsnet legal section for inadvertently posting it where I should not have

And

·        Been subject to eight outraged and unsympathetic comments proclaiming my attitude to shortfall debt is naive, self indulgent and irresponsible.

Sincerely hoping the mood of these Mumsnet readers is not a reflection of the thinking woman or the public in general, this venomous outburst has left me wondering how I, and those like me, can hope to succeed in bringing about change in the attitude of the government, the financial regulators, and the banking elite if so many individuals are of the opinion the blame rests squarely with the very people who are struggling to keep their heads above water during this economic crisis, instead of the reckless and fraudulent risk-management strategies of the too big to fail banks who put them there.

English born American poet and dramatist W H Auden once said, “We are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for I don’t know” and after a week of this kind I can empathise with his viewpoint entirely.

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.                                                                                                               

Blame and Circumstance

Jean Paul Getty once said, “If you owe the bank one hundred dollars that’s your problem, if you owe them a hundred million dollars then that is their problem” and while a global economic recession gives rise to worldwide fretting over trillions, democracy remains the process by which the "powers that be" choose to allocate the blame.

For  Antonio Horta Osario, chief executive officer of  41% tax payer owned banking giant Lloyds, it is over enthusiastic claims management companies swamping his administrators for PPI compensation who are getting his goat. Lloyds are expected to pay out an estimated five hundred million pounds to clients to whom they have miss-sold PPI. Mr Horta Osario says one in four claims submitted by these companies are for individuals who are not eligible for compensation nor have they been customers of the bank and says this blanket approach to the claims process is not only slowing it down but costing Lloyds money. His has publically stated “ it is fraud and it must stop”. However he has not felt the need to make such strong statements about Lloyds Banking Group’s own HBOS executives, despite the knowledge several are now facing criminal charges for alleged financial crimes which have cost the indivual and the economy billions.

Defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has also chosen to point his accusing finger this week declaring he is of the opinion it is the individual who “over borrowed in the economic boom who must now admit to their part in the financial crisis”. He says the banks had to lend to someone and these people should “accept responsibility for the consequences of their own choices” rather than conveniently cast the blame on the banks.  However, when speaking of the period in which he helped formulate David Cameron’s economic strategy in opposition he says, “We started living a lifestyle both in private consumption and in public consumption which could we not afford [and it] ran away with us” so unsurprisingly it appears the governments take on the financial is what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.

In contrast, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, previously reluctant to lay the blame at anyone’s door, now tells us it is “the failure of a system” that is at fault and not the individual. Speaking of “a slow and steady recovery coming during the course of 2012” he admits the Bank of England must take a “share of the responsibility” for the financial crisis and “with benefit of hind sight should have shouted from the rooftops that a financial system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too quickly and borrowed too much, and that so-called “ light-touch regulation hadn’t prevented any of this”.

It also seems HBOS auditors KPMG may well be shouldering some blame this week following reports an official investigation by the Financial Reporting Committee to investigate their conduct following HBOS whistle blower Paul Moore’s letter to the Treasury Select Committee sighting an inaccuracy in their forensic audit regarding his dismissal as global head of regulatory risk in 2005. Mr Moore was “let go” because he disagreed with the board’s attitude to risk and warned that HBOS’s lending strategy had become dangerously over heated. He believes KPMG’s decision to record this event as “a clash of personalities” was wholly misleading to the Lloyds takeover of 2008 and eventually cost the tax payer a further millions in government bailout support . Mr Moore blames the fact that, “money seems to be more important to KMPG’s strategy than integrity and professionalism”.

And

Stephen Hester, chief executive officer of 84% taxpayer own Royal Bank of Scotland is also casting the blame this week and its not, as one might expect on his predecessor Fred Goodwin who has already been stripped of his knighthood, is facing criminal charges for fraud and may well have past bonuses recalled to help fund PPI compensation. Instead Mr Hester’s eight gardeners on his 7 million pound, 350 acre Oxfordshire estate tell us rain has blighted attendance of the annual charitable opening of his twenty five acre gardens. It may not have crossed Mr Hester’s mind his infamous fight to keep his £963,000 bonus earlier this year despite a dip of 36% on its share price, a first quarter loss of 1.4 billion and further RBS job losses ,bringing the total to almost 50% of its pre- crisis work force, might well have had something to do with the public's disinterest in his garden.

Founder of the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company, Harvey S Firestone once said, “A man with a surplus can control circumstance, but a man without a surplus is controlled by circumstance and often has no opportunity to exercise judgement”. However if this week is anything to go by, this rule seems seldom to apply and it is for this reason I live in hope that, despite a life now lived without surplus, I will have the opportunity to exercise my own judgement in my ongoing personal battle with HBOS and will, one day, enjoy a result as a consequence of public opinion insisting the banks ultimately accept the blame.

The Emperor's New Clothes

On occasion I am asked why I exchanged a lucrative career in the Financial Services Industry for the life of a housewife and mother. I am uncomfortable when I am faced with no alternative but to explain as failure on any level does not sit well with me. Admitting that my health failed, albeit in a non life threatening way, when undiagnosed Hypothyroidism, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, twice weekly migraines, high blood pressure and Alopecia Totalis finally caught up with me at the age of forty is no exception. 

In 1998, on my GP's instructions, I walked away from a job which provided substantial returns in exchange for an unsustainable pace and instead I chose to spend the past twelve years living an "alternative" lifestyle in an effort to accommodate my physical shortcomings by way of a less stressful life. As a result my hair grew back, my blood pressure settled, I no longer fell asleep the moment I sat down and I was much happier knowing I had time to surcombe to bouts of ill health when they occurred.

In October 2008 this changed.

Forced by circumstance to once again endure unhealthily high levels of stress when I become a one woman debt fighting machine immediately highlighted my inadequacies. Within a matter of days it plunged me back into a regime of daily migraine, sudden weight loss, insomnia, panic attacks and chronic Alopecia. Managing these health issues while simultaneously trying acquire up to date knowledge of the financial services industry guidelines and regulations has made it all the more arduous to access my own rusty knowledge of the industry let alone retain it but despite the shackles of these infuriating limitations, I  remained committed to saving my family from the ongoing persecution of HBOS. To this end I have been exploring the world of finance via archived newspaper articles. During my research I came across the words of ex- HBOS risk management executive and whistleblower Paul Moore and was nothing short of astounded to discover just what HBOS had been up to.

Having already lost his job as a result of his attempts to warn the HBOS board their lending strategy was critically flawed, Mr Moore bravely ignored a gagging order to expose the relentlessly irresponsible behavior of his HBOS colleagues.  His revelations provided me with an extremely enlightening insight into how my husband was able secure the levels of borrowing he did and also explained the short-term financial motivation behind the board's endorsement of these economically dangerous lending policies. Coupled with the shockingly inadequate aspects of corporate and regulatory governance which permitted an HBOS sales culture specifically designed to harvest short term gain regardless of the cost to customers and shareholders to go unchecked, it became clear from what Moore was saying, it was not just our home and our financial future which had been steered towards the rocks by HBOS, but that of the economy as a whole.

Convinced even non bankers with no risk management expertise would recognize the pitfalls of lending “money to people who have no jobs, no provable income and no assets” Paul Moore firmly believes the current financial crisis has come about as a direct result of "an Emperor’s New Clothes attitude within HBOS”. He says anyone “not blinded by money, power and pride felt unable to speak up for fear of stepping out of line with the rest of the lemmings who were busy organizing themselves to run over the cliff edge” behind their sweet talking CEO. 

This was a complete revelation to me.

However, despite this newly acquired insight and amid widespread reports Lloyds/HBOS' new CEO Antonio Horta Osorio plans for "a new beginning", I am still left completely unable to comprehend why HBOS, now publicly exposed for their recklessness and under official investigation, has seen fit to instruct both their collections and their legal departments to hound my family for a £217,000 shortfall which they created, risking further scrutiny and investigation and yet more bad press.

An ancient Arabian proverb suggests, "There are many ways to recognize foolish behavior, anger without cause; speech without profit; change without progress; inquiry without object" and because HBOS and their henchmen continue to employ each and every one of these traits to hound and harass their victims for no logical reason, I can only conclude they remain committed to seeking counsel from fools in preference to heeding the wise words of their former head of corporate risk management, Paul Moore. 

This does not bode at all well for any of us.