Cabbages and Things

                                               
I, like Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States of America, have always been amongst those who believe that the greatest freedom of speech [is]the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking". Finding myself silenced by laryngitis for the last few days has provided me with an ideal opportunity to test this theory.

So far I have heard;

·        the US Justice Department has struggled to find adequate evidence to press criminal charges against senior executives of major lenders despite a multitude of mortgage documents bearing evidence of recently forged signatures and illegal alterations being made available to them. They remain convinced their hands are tied regardless of the U.S. Treasury’s confirmation that it is conducting a civil investigation into 4,500 illegal foreclosures while attorneys representing service members estimate banks have foreclosed on up to 30,000 military personnel in potential violation of the law.

·        Shane O’Riordain (Group Communications Director of the Lloyds banking group) saying on Radio 4, “It’s entirely right for companies, both our company and others, to pay bonuses when performance targets have been met” only a few hours before HBOS whistle blower Paul Moore explained, also on Radio 4, the flip side to this “reward for growth at any cost culture” was a publicly awarded cabbage for those who failed or, in his case, a lunacy label for warning of the economic risks.

·        Big banks continue to believe they are not only fair and fit for purpose, but essential for our continued welfare. They insist people should stop complaining and calling for regulatory measures to safeguard our economic future but instead, knuckle down to suffer whatever deprivation is necessary and leave them (in some cases the very same people who caused the economic crisis in the first place) to get on with fixing the economic crisis.

And on the home front:

·        Lloyds TSB’s collections department insist, in spite of the CAB’s written confirmation to the contrary, their file notes are evidence that my mature, part-time and voluntary CAB representative rang their Lloyds TSB collections department at 6.42 a.m. on the morning of 11 August 2010 to offer to make a payment arrangement on my behalf.

·        the Ombudsman’s adjudicator has explained, yet again that, in spite of originally initiating this particular ombudsman’s compliant on the basis that neither I, nor the CAB, had ever entered into a payment arrangement with Lloyds TSB, it is not her role to uphold my complaint by insisting, (as per my repeated requests) Lloyds communicate directly with me, just because they might have made a mistake about my entering apayment arrangement.

And

·        Faced with figures from Lloyds own housing growth tables for 2006-2008 which support  my case for the over-valuation of my property, I have been told my £217,000 mortgage shortfall is too “remote” to provide a causal link to support a loss for which I can sue.

It is said each of us are given a little spark of madness at birth and because of this it is important not to lose it. If my own week is anything to go by, there is absolutely no danger of this as I am clearly surrounded by either fools or madmen 

And,

In honour of International women’s day, our fair share of mad women too.

Plato and Platitudes

Plato once said, “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws” and, to my intense irritation, this morning’s endeavours at my lawyers office were no exception to this disheartening observation. Once again it has been revealed there are yet more HBOS favouring obstacles in my path to prevent the law from making HBOS accountable for actions which now appear to have been pivotal to our overall financial demise as well as the loss of our home.

When, in October 2008, I first discovered to what lengths my husband had over extended to keep our property development company afloat, my focus was on debt forgiveness for the £217,000 mortgage shortfall HBOS chose to create when they forced a sale on home. Initially unaware of HBOS’s sexist and neglectful attitude towards their duty of care to customers, it did not occur to me that this infamous bank had actually played, through its corporate growth at any cost policy, a leading role in our financial downfall. 

I now strongly suspect the opposite and plan to do my level best to prove it.

Hearing of a banking policy to over value properties for mortgage purposes in the USA and then discovering HBOS themselves had launched a pre-crisis mortgage product offering 125% loan to value (in Nov 2006) prompted me to consider the possibility that our home might have been overvalued too. I now believe HBOS' objective in April 2006 was not to raise us money against the equity within our property but instead it was to sell us a £790,000 mortgage against equity we simply did not have. My theory is further supported by the fact that our only prospective purchaser's surveyor down valued our home (by a massive £150,000) to £800,000 in April 2008 after HBOS had valued it a whopping £925,000 less than two years earlier. When HBOS eventually sold our home in April 2009 for a mere £665,000, I began to smell a very large HBOS rat.

Aghast at the implications it became clear to me that the attempts to sell our house between April 2007 and September 2008 had been completely futile and, for the first time, I began to comprehend just how much the HBOS culture of making a sale at any price had actually cost us. Not only had it, from outset, made it impossible to sell our home without creating a shortfall for years to come, but it also misled us into thinking there was enough equity within our main residence (15% of its value) to complete our building development project from the proceeds of its sale. What is more, this building project was not only destined to provide both a new home for our family but also was also designed to provide a generous residual income from its two letting units. In addition it was also earmarked to provide the security for a further building project on which my husband had already spent £50,000 obtaining an option and planning permission for the construction of twenty-three Eco friendly homes, all of which a housing association had already agreed to purchase off plan. This project alone was estimated to return us in excess of £500,000 profit.  

Because of an inaccurate HBOS valuation in April 2006 I now realise my life was, and always has been, on a crash course for financial destruction from the day we accepted HBOS’s re-mortgage offer.  Furthermore, I am nothing short of devastated to find, if the two litigation lawyers I consulted this morning are to be believed, there is nothing the law can do to make HBOS accountable for the impact these huge losses have had on my future let alone encourage them to write off a £217,000 mortgage shortfall they created when they refused to allow me to meet out interest payment by letting my property while my husband found another job.

In the words of Martin Luther King, “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal” and it appears that from what I have learnt today, our feral bankers are not only set to enjoy an untouchable status when it comes to regulation and reform but are also set to continue, like Hitler, to profit from the benefit of a legal carte blanche as well.

The air that I breath

The Duke of Wellington once said, "All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do” and I find his words wholly descriptive of the process I have endured throughout my three year mission to obtain a meaningful dialogue with HBOS.

Grateful of knowledge gleaned of the lending industry via a career in financial services combined with a hundred years of financial expertise within my immediate family gave me the impression I would be well positioned to communicate with HBOS about our financial difficulties and effect a solution. Initially I hoped to avoid the forced sale of my home in 2008 by letting it for a three year period to a long term tenant. When this failed I believed an understanding of money might stand me in good stead when requesting debt forgiveness.  Instead, I discovered nothing could have been further from the truth when it came to dealing with the too big to fail bank, HBOS.

Over the past three years I have,

·        Fully explained our financial circumstances and supplied supporting evidence to HBOS

·        Enlisted the help of a many of charitable organisations to verify my circumstances to HBOS

·        Researched and quoted the guidelines for the FSA, FOS and CCS to illustrate my point to HBOS

·        Scrutinised and quoted from a plethora of literature on government guidelines and the Mortgage Code of Conduct to support my case against  HBOS

·        Absorbed the expertise of any number of insolvency experts, tax investigators, accountants and bankruptcy courts to quote to HBOS in an effort to make our position understood

And

·        Written hundreds of letters to HBOS, their agents and their regulatory authorities initially calling on the use of logic, then begging for empathy and compassion, and finally demanding a formal complaint.

Armed with the aforementioned industry insight, I had hoped for a practical and dignified resolution to our unrecoverable position would eventually be negotiated. Sadly my endeavours have resulted in nothing more than a vast accumulation of knowledge in areas where I formerly had little or no expertise.

On the other hand I have learned a great deal about debt, and am especially well informed on debt with HBOS. From three long years at the HBOS coal face I have discovered,

·        HBOS are neither interested in the truth nor are they motivated to reach a cost effective resolution to an individual’s financial problems

·        Charitable debt handling organisations regularly feel impotent when  battling the banks on behalf on their vulnerable clients and have little in their armoury to offer other than sympathy and bankruptcy

·        Regulatory guidelines for the financial services industry are rarely enforced and their in-house adjudicators are often, at best, subjective and at worst derogatory and unsympathetic

·        Individuals employed in debt collection on behalf of HBOS are often superior in attitude and extremely judgmental.

·        Bankruptcy and insolvency arrangements are a luxury many, including myself, cannot afford

·        No one really believes that debt forgiveness for the individual actually exists in spite of evidence I have supplied to the contrary

·        Letters of logic, compassion and complaint are rarely read by those who have the wherewithal to understand them

And,

·        A little bit of knowledge on the part of the individual can pose a very lucrative commodity when it comes to establishing HBOS’s culpability in the financial downfall of one of the 99%.

This week, I am to meet with the senior partner of a large and established law firm to ascertain if, after three years of pleading for debt mercy, it is I who has grounds to pursue a legal case against HBOS for causing my financial demise in the first place.

It is said there is no point complaining about the air if it’s all you have to breath. And for this reason I have previously looked only for solutions, and later compassion, from my HBOS oppressors. I had hoped our deficit would be forgiven and in so doing allow me to consider my family’s future in a life free from tormentors we could not satisfy.  Now there is the smallest of chances to enjoy a completely different out-look, I can only imagine the joy of breathing air which is no longer contaminated by debt. However, despite this somewhat over-whelming possibility for some good news....

I still won’t be holding my breath!

Its all Greed to me

Mahatma Ghandi said, "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man greed" and as I compile yet another letter for the Financial Ombudsman, I cannot help wondering if it will be HBOS’s overvaluation of my house in May 2006 that finally turns my case against them to my advantage. Encouraged by news I may finally have found legal representation, I can only hope my complaint will ultimately reveal the lengths to which HBOS have gone to in an effort to feed their own avarice.
 
While this week even Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin attributes his country’s economic growth to both its large oil and gas reserves and its wealth “of a talented, creative, well trained and educated people” whom he regards as “an enormous treasure", I am left resisting thoughts that in the UK the our own government along with the Financial Ombudsman’s Service are merely facades for organisations established to mute the cries of the very same talented, creative, well trained and educated British people who are now the fallout victims of a global economic crisis. With both the government and our regulators either powerless or unwilling to intervene, the battle for democracy remains the individuals fight and it rages on through protest against the billionaires and corporations intent on reshaping politics to suit their own interests.
   
While officials talk of a future which embraces debt haircuts and a return to real values, real assets and real jobs, those of us struggling in the wake of the global economic crisis are faced with no assets, no jobs and government values which only support a desire to remain in office, leaving the perpetrators of widespread irresponsible banking, and in some cases out and out fraud, thinking they deserve a medal if their waive obscene banking bonuses despite falling profits and share prices.  As one reporter said, “These vastly pampered moguls really believe they are worth the money, and cannot comprehend why most of the rest of us so passionately hold them in contempt.”

In contrast I, along with the Greeks, wait with  renewed trepidation for the impact haircuts, bailouts and austerity measures will deliver to a land which remains without promise and without a reasonable future for many of our children. I can only hope that, not unlike the USA’s Citibank who wrongfully endorsed mortgages in the lead up to the global economic crisis and now “admits, acknowledges, and accepts responsibility” for passing on bad loans, HBOS will also be required to stomp up the money for a short back and sides for me and in so doing free my family from an untenable financial future which is set to last for the rest of my life.

A Native American grandfather talking to his young grandson tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other wolf is fear, greed and hatred. "Which wolf will win, grandfather?" asks the young boy. "Which ever one I feed," is the reply.
I am pleased to report both I and Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England believe the time has come to stop feeding the greedy wolves because, in the words of Aristotle, “Poverty requires much while avarice requires everything” and we simply can not afford it.

More reasons to be cheerful

Margaret Thatcher once said, “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”  Hoping there is rationale to this argument, I put aside the financial ombudsman’s adjudicator’s judgemental and derogatory comments in an effort to relax with my children over half term. Distancing myself from the onslaught in this way has enabled me to reflect on my campaign to rebuild my family’s life and there is a lot for which I am most grateful.

In October 2008 my world fell apart when I discovered my husband had borrowed well beyond our means in a desperate bid to complete a building project before the property market went into recession. Our troubles were compounded by the news our business bank, Heritable, was in administration leaving us in an untenable position on every front.

However,

In December 2011 Heritable Bank formally released my husband and I from a shortfall obligation of £210,000 and in so doing presented me with a beautifully packaged Christmas gift of unbridled relief. I remain eternally grateful to those within Heritable Bank who chose to use empathy and compassion when considering the solution to our predicament.

In October 2008 when I realised there was also £446,000 of credit card debt and no means with which to repay it, I was distraught to be party to this insurmountable sum and imagined it would be with us forever.

However,

Today, £40,000 is all that remains as the balance has either been written off or deemed not persuable by our creditors. Those who elected debt forgiveness as a way forward for us offered it with words of good will for both our family and our future. I remain truly grateful for their pragmatic approach to our financial problems.

In October 2008 I was horrified to find our family home was the subject of a possession order and further panicked to discover without financial references it was impossible to secure a tenancy on a rented house through the normal channels. Fearing for my children’s future and desperate to remain in a familiar location amongst friends and family I tried everything I could think of but without success.

However,

In December 2008, I received a phone call from a gentleman who, having originally declined my request for accommodation, wished to reconsider our application on the basis of a character reference instead of a financial one. In January 2009 we moved into a homely farmhouse where we have remained ever since.  By finding an innovative solution to our housing needs our landlords provided us with sanctuary when others wouldn’t. For this ongoing act of kindness I am truly appreciative.

In October 2008, finding ourselves bereft of both income and assets we were not only unable to pay the school fees but were already a term behind. Believing my children would never again enjoy a private education I contacted the school to advise them of our position with the heaviest of hearts.

However,

Instead of being shown the door, not only was my eldest son awarded a full bursary but I was also given advice on how to secure two further awards for my younger children. In Feb 2012 thanks to the guidance of the Headmaster’s and their respective bursars I am proud to say my daughter has now received an academic award for an independent secondary school and my youngest son has been earmarked for a sports scholarship. I am indebted to the people who guided me through this emotive process with my children’s best interests in their hearts and a genuine understanding for our difficulties.

And,

On lodging my HBOS complaint with the Financial Ombudsman’s Services in April 2010 I mistakenly believed help would be on hand to communicate effectively with my persecutors and sheild me from further episodes of personal attack. Although FOS intervention quickly resulted in the removal of HBOS’s Merrils Ede henchmen from my case, more recent letters from my adjudicator have revealed an impatient disinterest combined with a sizeable ration of personal distaste. Attitude of this nature, from a financial regulator appointed to my case, left me feeling both despondent and completely disarmed.

However,

Following my complaint to the FOS’s Chief Executive, I was contacted by their complaints department who not only expressed remorse at the way in which I had been dealt with by their adjudicator but also revealed HBOS had been unresponsive to the FOS’s requests concerning my case and in so doing may well forgoe the opportunity to have their say. Futhermore my complaint is to be fast-tracked to avoid current case lead times of fourteen months and in addition I am also permitted to include my recent findings on the subject of HBOS’s over-valuation of my home. Being treated with respect and understanding over the pain-staking and painful process of bringing HBOS to account has not only lifted my spirits but given me the invaluable gift of a hope and for this I am immeasurably grateful.

William Arthur Ward, author, pastor and teacher believed we should all, “do more than belong, participate; do more than care, help; do more than believe, practice; do more than forgive, forget; do more than dream, work” and it is clear, from my half term reflections, with the exception of HBOS and my ombudsman's ajudicator, most people who have touched my life during these difficult years have chosen to live and work by a similar code to that endorsed by William Ward. It is to these  people I wish to extend my whole hearted thanks.

Girl Power

In the words of Groucho Marx, “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made” and with this in mind I am left wondering whether David Cameron is discovering or faking the secret of life when he speaks of the benefits of corporate equality and the need for more women in the boardroom as his ready remedy for the current economic crisis.

While I whole heartedly agree honesty and fair dealing, regardless of gender, should be a motivation for us all, I struggle to understand how Cameron plans to instigate a shift in age old corporate habits to ensure women get more top industry jobs when he remains unable to implement a shift in either policy or legislation which meaningfully takes to task the perpetrators of banking fraud or makes them accountable for their crimes against the economy.

Little more than one hundred years ago women fought for sound policy and impartial justice for all.  A century later however, it is not just women who are suffering the consequences of discrimination, this time by government backed banking recklessness and unbridled favoritism, when it comes to arrears solutions and debt forgiveness for individuals.

Although I applaud the principal of a meritocracy which takes no heed of gender, the chance of success will remain limited if our government appointed regulators continue to support employers like HBOS who openly declare they have no obligation to discuss lending matters with married women if they have already discussed them with their husbands.  I cannot imagine this Lloyds TSB Group owned, taxpayer supported corporation will be one to embrace a louder female executive voice on the board or anywhere else if my own experience is anything to go by.

For me it is Kishore Mahbubani not David Cameron who explains who will be guiding our politics towards economic recovery when he says,

"The simplest way of understanding the virtues of meritocracy is to ask the question: why is Brazil a soccer superpower and an economic middle power? The answer is that when it looks for soccer talent, it searches for it in all sectors of the population, from upper classes to the slums. A boy from the slums is not discriminated against if he has soccer talent. But in the economic field, Brazil looks for talent in a far smaller base of the population, primarily the upper and middle classes."

I strongly suspect any vision for economic recovery is destined to suffer the mediocre results of the Brazilian economic field if it continues to remains so deeply entrenched in the old boy network it is unable to pay anything but lip service to accessing the untapped potential of womankind from either the upper middle class or anywhere else for that matter.  However, in the event this is not the case and more women do find their way into high places with David Cameron’s help, I can only hope their effectiveness might bode well for those of us who have been discriminated against and defrauded out of our financial futures at the hands of banks like HBOS. If not, judging by the number of comments attached to articles on this subject, Cameron’s words have made a high profile and debatable headline even if, like Groucho Marx’s suggests, the speaker has merely mastered the art of faking it.

Dark Knights and Hoods

Evangelist Billy Graham said, “There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men” and hearing that former HBOS executive Peter Cumming’s corporate lending portfolio was something of an Aladdin’s cave, I can see how tantalising the promise of such riches must have been; especially to those who were ignorant of the fraudulent methods employed to achieve them. For those who agreed to practise the dark art of perpetuating “the get rich quick” myth on the balance sheets, I have no doubt the power that accompanied such lucrative returns was both all consuming and intoxicating.

Still victimised by the consequences of the ongoing banking gluttony, I often speculate as to how HBOS originally portrayed my own residential mortgage in April 2006 when an £790,000 advance was secured against my home based on what I now believe was a grossly inflated valuation of £925,000. It  has been no surprise to find HBOS' continued nonchalant attitude has persisted and precluded me from all discussions regarding this mortgage from the outset until the moment I contacted them about our financial circumstances in October 2008. Now I am even more curious to know how my unrecoverable £217,000 shortfall is being recorded in their loan book and explained considering it represents a nose dive of approximately 30% against their in house valuation only three years earlier and remains completely unrecoverable.

However, with all eyes currently on who will or won’t take a slice of the millions set aside for bankers bonuses this year and increasing public interest in who should be next to follow Fred Goodwin into his Knighthood free status, I cannot imagine anyone within HBOS or the FOS are wondering if the vast amount of HBOS debt that continues to be written off every day by Lloyds TSB might ever include a residential shortfall which has left me standing on a financial precipice for years. Nor do I delude myself any consideration by the FSA has been given as to whether or not my unrecoverable loan is still propping up HBOS balance sheets as a fictitious asset on which to pay executive bonuses or instead it is being used to perpetuate another boardroom driven myth that lurks in shady recesses supported by negative accountability for financial crimes against everyone but the HBOS executives themselves.

Forever presented with antidotes to our economic health which continue to favour the corporate along with solutions limited to toothless acts of regulation designed to placate rather than resolve, I cannot comprehend why, to date, no government initiative or banking reform has focused on a reprieve for the individual victims who, like me, remain in purgatory as a direct result of the well documented fraudulence, unadulterated greed and widespread corporate dishonesty of sociopathic CEOs, Banksters and their Hoods.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution” however, despite an economic crisis of global proportions, those who cruelly perverted the course of both my financial and family life, along with the lives of thousands of others like me, are not only at liberty to bully and persecute their victims without restraint but, thanks to David Cameron’s Christian principals of forgiveness and the captured policies of his regulators, they remain free to pervert any chance of a morally sound outcome for the individual.