Banks Rescue Plans Are Questionable To Say The Least
Monday 08 December 2008
It is all well and good the government coming out with these grandiose statements in relation to sorting everything out for those suffering at the hands of the credit crunch, but is it all just a load of hot air?
Yes, would appear to be the answer, as customers find themselves in less than enviable positions whereby they have to beg for overdrafts, suffer penalties for late repayments, and appear in court due to institutions wanting to seize their assets.
Ostensibly the Bank of England base rate being lower than it has been for 57 years would have serious relief implications for the average proletariat, but people are still seriously losing out big time. Financial institutions have been quick to levy the limit that the rates can drop on customers’ tracker mortgages, and others are being charged standard variable rates of more than six per cent.
It doesn’t take a person who majored in math logic to work out that this is treble the low base rate that the government imposed in order to help people out. Just what is the purpose in reducing the base rate if the financial institutions are not obliged to pass the relief onto their customers.
Amid all this financial misery, cases are passing through court like diuretics passing through a week persons bladder, in relation to credit card companies and loan lenders issuing charging orders on the property of customers that have fallen radically behind with payments. These charges are only going to lead to people having their homes repossessed.
Lenders seem frantic to secure their interests and once a charge order is in place, it allows the lender to be able to force a customer to sell their property, should the term of the court order be broken.
People with knowledge in the financial sector are of the opinion that apparently good-willed gestures from the likes of RBS, not to repossess property until six months subsequent to a borrower slipping into arrears, are about as much use as a wax fireplace. A year ago the process took anything up to 18 months, so they are effectively worsening the situation for borrowers, but publicising this ‘grandiose’ gesture in the face of repossessions being more commonplace.
It is extremely worrying that debt collectors are being used more frequently, as well as the courts, in order to repossess peoples property, or to secure charges. it is driving borrowers to hara-kiri levels of distraction.
The banks, who it is increasingly difficult to have any sort of sympathy towards, are ‘waxing fiscally’ about having to rebuild their capital, treat their customers fairly, and look out for the people that are savers, not just the people in debt.
Northern Rock, the originators of ‘My god – what have we done!’ got some spokes woman who remained unnamed, to say the following:
‘This situation that we are operating in is not the normal type of one, at all.’ This vague comment was in relation to the manner in which the terrible bank are giving new customers really good mortgage deals, and not giving them to existing customers. It is as though they have been taking their policy concepts from those satirical Nationwide adverts.
Even though this practice has been heavily scrutinised in the past, Northern Rock don’t mind rapaciously benefiting from the dire straits of the taxpayers that bailed them out of their avaricious quagmire in the first instance – great!
The same vague spokeswoman also said – ‘Number one priority for us is to pay back the loan that the government gave us using the monies of taxpayers.’