The banks. If we're bailing them out, shouldn't we get a little something in return? After all, isn't that what business is all about? You give something. You get something. Let's take me as an example. I'm in the business of writing. I write words for my clients to help them achieve a goal. They give me money. Both parties go away happy.
Banks biting the hand that feeds.
So, when every taxpayer in the country has to pay €20,000 (those low interest rate for your overpriced property doesn't look so much of a bargain now) to keep the bankers in business, shouldn't we get something in return? After all, dodgy business practices in the banking sector are one of the main reasons our economy crashed and burnt. Now, nearly a quarter of all people with residential mortgages are in negative equity. Employment doubled last year and stands at over 12%, begging the question how many of those in negative equity no longer have a job? Is anyone bailing these people out? No. But, perversely, these people are expected to bail out the people who left them in the lurch in the first place. And what thanks do they get?
Interest rate rises!
Most of the banks have already upped rates by 0.5% and at least another 1% is expected by the end of the year. So huge unaffordable mortgages are now even more unaffordable to people who have already watched their take-home plummet over the last couple (or disappear altogether).
American Express. Irish Excuse.
The banker's excuse is that the interest rates they've been giving us have been too low for too long. Really! Wake up! Banky bozo. The Central Bank set our interest rates. It's 0.5%. The average Irish variable rate is about 3%. That seems like a fairly healthy 600% mark-up. But, yeah, it's only 2.5% (at the moment), so we'll give you that.
But what happens when we look at another of the bankers' revenue streams: credit cards. I know that mine has increased by several percent in a matter of months. Here, interest rates currently average about 15%, a 3000% mark up. Surely not even our incompetent bankers can fail to make a business profitable on such large margins.
So now that we're all in massive debt, the country's crippled, economy fecked and a housing market in tatters, in response to our bail-out, the bankers who were behind it, increase the interest rate margin, putting ordinary people under even increased pressure. And, with the government saying we can't afford to let them go under, they know they can get away with it. They can even afford a nice little bonus and a new overseas holiday home, while the couple paying for their mistakes sits in a unsellable apartment in Ashbourne, now valued at just 100k, with a €300,000 mortgage. They'll probably be there for the rest of their miserable days unless, of course, they get repossessed.
No one will bail them out.
When your business fails, you go out of business.
So let me say it loud and proud. Let the banks go under. The country will be no worse off. In fact, we'll be better off. Just imagine all that money we are being forced to give to them going back into the 'real' economy. By giving it to them, we are converting hard earned currency into 'monopoly' money.
Of course, we'll always need banks. But market forces will do their part. The old institutions will be replaced by new innovative brands, such as Rabobank - companies that run businesses like businesses, competing for customers and run by ordinary people with a talent for what they do. Because if we bail the failed bankers out now, the only lesson they will have learned is that they can do it again.
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