Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful sunny autumn day, perfect for the walk to Church.
Our minister is on holiday and the assistant minister was taking the service.
You could really see the difference in the two styles of preaching, the one sticking to the interpretation of the text and the other (our usual minister) bound to have had quite a lot to say about the current problems with the global financial systems.
I find the whole thing difficult to understand. What caused “respectable” banks to get involved with sub-prime lending?
I shall say nothing about those City whiz kids on both sides of the pond who pursued the creed of ‘greed is good’, awarding themselves not only eye-wateringly high salaries but also obscene bonuses
I am thinking about the High Street Banks and Building Societies. I think it all started with demutualisation of them and of respectable life assurance companies. Much of this was pushed through by pressure from the small investor seeing easy money. After that the demutualised organizations faced pressure from their shareholders (and from their senior staff) to follow in the paths of the big banks.
It is not so long since Building Societies would lend on the basis of only one partner's salary and required a reasonable deposit before lending and then lending only up to a certain percentage of the value of the property. How did they move away so quickly and so far?
This was to be their downfall.
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2 comments:
Three cheers for Nationwide Building Soc. They are a mutual society - owned by their members and not by any share holders.
Many years ago, when carpet bagging became the rage, and many Building Societies (Northern Rock being one?) were persuaded to change into banks, Nationwide put a rule in force that made this type of horrid greedy behaviour impossible for any new account holders. Yipiee!
Ok.. rant over..
Anna xxx
That is why my mortgage and savings are with the Nationwide.. better by far to not be part of the get rich quick schemes operated by many other institutions.
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