A caller to today’s Liveline provides us with a good example of the ruthlessness and greed of the banking sector.
The caller, an elderly lady, used her entire life savings to pay €100,000 off her son’s mortgage when he found himself in deep trouble.
The bank, the EBS, must have been rubbing its hands in glee as this part of the mortgage was on a tracker contract and so its payment would save the bank a substantial amount of money.
The woman then asked the EBS to come to an agreement for the rest of the mortgage (€50,000) which was on a fixed contract.
Not a chance lady, if you want to pay this part of the mortgage off we will impose a substantial penalty.
It’s the law she was told, it’s policy she was told.
You do us a favour, we screw you.
The Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, took time our from her busy schedule organising a no holds barred crackdown on alleged social welfare fraudsters to gently ask the banks to go a bit easy on the increasingly desperate peasants.
I actually would like to see the banks becoming active in reaching out to the citizens who have become embroiled in debt because of the recession, losing their job, losing their business.
The critical thing, said the Minister, is that people should engage with their lender.
We can see from the above example what happens to people when they ‘engage’ with their ruthless lenders.
Fergus Finlay has a good article in today’s Irish Examiner on the mortgage crisis in which he brings up the subject of revolution.
In my opinion the big picture is very simple.
The corrupt political system allowed the banks and others destroy our country.
The corrupt political system continues to protect the banks and others who destroyed our country.
Nothing will change until the people destroy the corrupt political system.
I heard the interview and it seemed that the woman, 79 years old, was still in some distress, not about the loan but, about here son.
I think the EBS manager behaved in a disgraceful manner.
She was 79 years old. It was her money not her sons.
He could have, but had no obligation to, asked had she taken independent financial advice.
Any competent advisor (Accountant, Solicitor) wold have told her to drive a bargain. She could have been represented for a fee of less than the penalty interest on the €50,000 fixed element.
She could have had the entire loan written off for cash of €75,000.
No mention was made of how much the EBS saved in funding costs as the €96,000 was tracker.
They probably saved at least €25,000 in present value terms.
Contrast this with greedy lawyers looking for termination payments after earning millions on tribunals and not forgetting our erstwhile Taoiseach, Bertie and his outrageous expenses bill. Irish people are punch drunk Can all this be brought to an end without violent revolution? I won’t live long enough to see it.