Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

[HairyArsedBloke]

I am planning to close my account with my current bank at appropriate junction in near future - I'll write to their directors however and will make sure the story is publisied. The main challenge is to get enough money in the bank for them to care...

Do you believe you can amass that amount? If so what are you going to use for the other five impossible things to believe in before breakfast?

Anyway, we've all had the same feelings. Someone once said to me that when you've got enough for the bank to give a frak about you then there are far more important problems to worry about and you may need a dodgy bank on your side to escape them.

[AtW]

Do you believe you can amass that amount? If so what are you going to use for the other five impossible things to believe in before breakfast?

Probably not - money lost of a lot of value these days and banks get them fresh off printed press: banks no longer depend on lending money they get from savers, so they do want customers who are in debt to them to make them profits and get money to lend from money markets or Govt.

That's really is an indictment of current system in once sentence above. If things worked the old school way current crisis would not have happened. But then again there would have been no huge bonuses paid out for gambling activities.

Anyway, we've all had the same feelings. Someone once said to me that when you've got enough for the bank to give a frak about you then there are far more important problems to worry about and you may need a dodgy bank on your side to escape them.

Maybe, but the feeling of satisfaction (especially if story is made public) is priceless

[HairyArsedBloke]

Probably not - money lost of a lot of value these days and banks get them fresh off printed press: banks no longer depend on lending money they get from savers, so they do want customers who are in debt to them to make them profits and get money to lend from money markets or Govt.

That's really is an indictment of current system in once sentence above. If things worked the old school way current crisis would not have happened. But then again there would have been no huge bonuses paid out for gambling activities.

This is a feature of the universal banks. You'll probably be surprised, but I believe that model is wrong. I am very much in favour of splitting up the banks into investment and commercial businesses. The latter is your idea of a bank and should have some, limited, government guarantee. The former should be largely free to do what they want, but should be allowed to fail.

However, it must be remembered that this distinction would not have prevented the issuance of sub-prime loans on both sides of the Atlantic that were encouraged by the Carter in the US and Brown in the UK. It would never have stopped the insane overspending and borrowing of the nuLiebore government. These are the two root causes of the mess we are in.

Maybe, but the feeling of satisfaction (especially if story is made public) is priceless

Join the queue for that one. I'm in there somewhere too.

[AtW]

However, it must be remembered that this distinction would not have prevented the issuance of sub-prime loans on both sides of the Atlantic that were encouraged by the Carter in the US and Brown in the UK.

I think it would have prevented it as banks under retail/commercial model would not be allowed to "invest" into those "AAA" complex products.

However it is true that it would have not have prevented banks from making stupid large business loans to businesses that overleveraged themselves by growing on debt rather than naturally, ie: Halifax's "investments".

Consequently growing by debt (loans etc) should have been strongly discouraged - if business plan is good and all going well then companies should use shareholder's capital to invest. And it should not have been possible to borrow via loans to buy shares. It's this perceived lack of risk (hedging, insurance) that fragging about with the system. The whole team that writes a big loan should face the consequences of their bad decision many years down the line, and if they don't like it they should find another job.

Another big problem is that notion that somehow risk can be avoided by buying CDS or insuring debt, this should not be possible int he first place: the lender should know that if loan goes bad then all problems of that loan will be that of the lender itself.

Now this would nuke 90% of the players in the casino and it may become less "liquid", but I'd take that: computers gave ability to sell/buy shares quickly, this is one of the root causes of the system being undone from within.

[minestrone]

Why they insist on those utility bills as if they are some kind of magic watermarked police checked paperwork? It's trivial to fake them and if no first name is put on bill then for two persons with first initials and last name same bill can be reused, what's the bloody point? It does not seem to affect fraudsters in anyway.

A perfect example why we need an biometric identification card.

And with that the thread takes a nasty turn.

[AtW]

A perfect example why we need an biometric identification card.

Foreigners already go through biometric system. A foreigner who wishes to open bank account in this country (without getting access to credit) might actually be safer bet as they might value possibility of having bank account in a decent country. Banks could have easily required biometric information linked to account - then this database is shared among all banks so that same person under different names can't open bank account.

Have not seen stats, but I reckon most of fraudsters in this country are local.

[minestrone]

Have not seen stats, but I reckon most of fraudsters in this country are local.

Goes without saying. Our current PM is chairman of the board of fraudsters.

There do have to be checks though and for the inconvenience it causes individuals is less than the problems than it can cause society.

Anyway I have an overdue on my money laundering course, I expect to be pulled up on that tomorrow. I had to do a fraud course last week where we were asked to listen for 'incongruous accents'. I worked for the fraud squad FFS.