Forgive me blogees for I have sinned. It has been nearly a month since my last blog-fessional.
I can’t point to a particular excuse, only that life keeps getting in the way. Or to be more accurate, my new business venture www.wedothewords.com (please go visit – lovely website). By some strange quirk of fate it has been attracting customers. The business isn’t just me, there is an old chum from a previous career involved and Slash the editor. My old chum brings savoir-faire to the adventure and Slash brings brevity. I bring the biscuits (Rich Tea obviously – the SAS of dunking biscuits).
New business ventures are predictably unpredictable. But there are two things you can always be sure of: expenditure (of time, effort and money) confidently strides out over the horizon whilst income rolls around behind you kicking and screaming like a truculent child.
I’ve been involved in quite a few new ventures over the years some successful, some not so. But, the common denominator in all of them is that I always played with other people’s money. This is something I have in common with the banks.
When I was young and looking for my first bank loan to buy an Opel Manta the first stop after the application was the bank manager. He wanted to size me up and try to understand why a 19 year old would need a ‘sports car’. He offered me the loan, but only on the proviso that I buy a Ford Fiesta or Escort. Those were the conditions of the advance.
These days, of course, things are different. I wouldn’t get to see the bank manager, because there isn’t one. But, the Indian call centre disguised as my personal banker would, until recently, have suggested a Ferrari.
They wouldn’t need to worry about my defaulting because at the end of the day banks can’t go bust – because you and I guarantee all their loans. It’s our money the Government are using to prop them up.
This is an interesting concept. Lets think about it for a minute. Everything I earn I put in a bank. The bank uses my money to lend to people and businesses. It also borrows against my money so it can lend even more money. It then sells the future interest repayments of my money to other banks or takes out a mortgage on my money to lend even more money.
Anyone still with me?
My money is now so far away from where it started that I have lost interest and the bank have lost track. But no matter because should someone in the long chain of lending not pay up the Government will step in and make good the loans. With my money. Genius.
But banks are even cleverer than that. They have taken all of my money and refused to lend it to anyone. In this way they can keep my money to pay bonuses.
Yesterday I read in the paper that the man the Government put in charge of the Quango responsible for looking after my money in the banking system stated, and I’m quoting almost verbatim here, ‘… if we take away bankers bonuses or defer them as shares to be vested over some years we are in danger of losing all the talent in the banking sector as they move elsewhere to achieve their remuneration expectations…’
Two things: Who are these talented bankers? Are they the ones who purchased securitised loans riddled with toxic debt? Is it the bankers who thought lending money to the long term unemployed in the Mississippi Delta represented a good lending risk? Or is it the ones that apologised for their mismanagement of banks to the Treasury Select Committee last year before walking off into the sunset with multi-million pound pension pots?
One thing's for sure - it's not the man who told me to buy a sensible Fiesta...
And anyway, where would all this talent move to – I imagine banks are crying out for bankers who don't understand what they are selling?
Naturally I have a solution. It involves snipers. I can’t go into too much detail here, blogs have ears and all that…
Bugger, I'm ranting again...
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