December 7th - will there be a run on the banks?

[Free energy]

afterall the money you have borrowed from the banks is somebody elses deposits

 

oh dear oh dear. One word for that martynh99....naive !

[fox20thc]

There is a flaw in this plan, banks usually have a limit on how much a person can withdraw without prior notice (so they can make sure they have it). Having once had to do this to withdraw a substantial four figure sum and we had to give them a few days notice.

[SUZIFACE]

I'll ask the question again. For those who feel that protest against the banks is necessary what other ways of protesting are there?

 

Everybody knows the banks helped get us in this mess. Yet it's the public that are taking the hit. A message needs to be sent even if it doesn't do anything this time.

 

Do what I did move to a independant BUilding society, yes there aint many branches, so not as convenient as a bank, but I tell you what, I know exactly what is happening with my account. Far superior to the banks. Banks do not deserve any ones customs, even before the credit crunch, the attitude of the staff was appaling to people, Im glad, I really am that a lot of bank employees have lost their jobs, and eventhough that may in some maner affect my business, it will teach them whats its like to have financial worries

[tog3]

Does anyone remember what Conservatives used to let happen to lame ducks? Why is it diifferent for their chums in the financial sector

[martynh99]

oh dear oh dear. One word for that martynh99....naive !

 

Do enlighten me ? Yes some of it in some cases will be money the banks have borrowed but some of it is also other peoples deposits - remember not all banks were bailed out by the gov i.e. taxpayer.

 

If this stunt is to be played fairly then people taking out their deposits from their current accounts in my opinion should also pay back what they have borrowed - otherwise they are, whats the word i'm looking for - oh yes , two-faced

[woodmally]

I dont have Direct Debits or credit cards, I pay the mortgage in cash at the branch, I dont use cheques, they will soon be defunct anyway, I can pay bills at paypoint, I am with an independant building society, cash is king guys, has the credit crunch taught people nothing, get rid of the cards

 

Paypoint is a system run by a bank. As its a mechanism for transfering money. If the banking system collapses then everything collapses. 90% of your money is not in the bank. What will happen if the bank becomes unstable is that they will claim all of the money back on debts people owe ie mortgages.

[SUZIFACE]

Paypoint is a system run by a bank. As its a mechanism for transfering money. If the banking system collapses then everything collapses. 90% of your money is not in the bank. What will happen if the bank becomes unstable is that they will claim all of the money back on debts people owe ie mortgages.

 

And exactly how would they do that, they cant take what you dont have, thats why people have mortgages, otherwise they would pay cash up front. And dont say they would reposess the house, as then you would have a revolution on your hands. People stand for too much s***t as it is, they would nnot put up with that

[Tricky]

If someone can tell me a true benefit to anybody from undermining the entire world banking system then I'll genuinely consider taking my money out in protest.

 

I was going to address this at length and then found someone had beaten me to it. What do you think Medusa?

 

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showpost.php?p=6923959&postcount=60

 

Last week George Osborne wrote out a check for £7m to the Irish banks in order that those same banks can pay some of our banks, RBS for instance, what they are owed to stop them going to the wall. I.e. we have just spent more than the whole austerity cuts will produce on bailing out our banks once again.

 

The Irish have been told they can't allow their banks to default because that would liquidate our banks and, probably more importantly, Germany's banks. So the people of Ireland are having to make to with real austerity measures that make ours look like a grain of sand in the desert in comparison. And why? So they can keep these banks alive in Ireland itself, the UK, the US and Germany, to name but a few. These banks that are so laden with debt, they could take the whole of Ireland's GDP on to their books and it wouldn't make any difference.

 

But this problem is Ireland's, not ours isn't it? Well so far it is. But Spain just failed to find anyone to buy its debt, Portugal is on the ropes and looking like a dope, and as for Greece...

 

When each of these countries get into trouble, taxpayers everywhere will have to fund bailouts to keep their banks alive because their banks are exposed to these markets and they cannot survive a default on those debts.

 

But the problem is escalating with each bailout, not going away; Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, then next onto Italy, France, UK, Japan and the US.

(Makes quite an interesting mnemonic as it happens).

 

Eventually all these banks will implode anyway, the only question is how much of our wealth are we going to throw down this bottomless pit before they do so.

 

So what about this withdrawing money thing? Well its heart is in the right place and it could possibly cause a run on a high street bank but I doubt it.

 

But what you should all be doing is moving your bank accounts out of banks with 'Casino Operations' and into banks/building societies that haven't. That's not a question of taking out a bit of cash, it's moving the whole account and getting your employer to pay into the new one.

 

The idea being that if the Governments are too craven to do anything radical like detonate a bankrupt bank, we, the people, should.

[SUZIFACE]

I would argue that there are a number of good reasons for bringing about the end of the banking system as we currently know it:

 

1. Banks lend irresponsibly under the current system- for a decade leading up to the '08 crash banks were complicit in offering mortgages and loans to those with incomes that were too low to repay them once interest rates rose. We also know, though don't like to admit, that banks lend money to weapons dealers and manufacturers as well as other unscrupulous agencies.

 

2. The system is broken through enormous debts and we've just bailed out banks by creating more debt which has basically created a situation that makes it look like we're in a recovery when really we're in yet another bubble. Unfortunately, this time the bubble is much much larger than the real estate bubble or the dot com bubble because it has occurred simulataneously across many banking systems in many countries.

When this bubble bursts (as we've just seen in Ireland) we can't fix the subsequent crash with more cuts to services because we've cut everything, we can't lower interest rates that are at rock bottom and we can't issue more money in bailouts because this would cause hyperinflation and a new great depression. We'll have to turn to the IMF and this will give this international agency huge political clout in this country.

 

3. The banks are not lending to the public, but are instead hoarding the bailout money we paid them. It's interesting to note that after the crash of 1929 the money supply shrunk by 33% in 3 years. In 2008 our money supply shrank by 40% in just 1 year. Our solution was to print all this stimulus money and give it to the banks who would then lend it out and ease the situation. Instead the banks have kept the money and have begun paying themselves huge bonuses again.

 

4. If we do nothing we'll all suffer in the long run. All this borrowing to pay off debt will continue to bite us back. We were struggling to afford the interest on our national debt before- those interest payments rose enormously with each huge loan we made from the banks to first bail out and then stimulate the banks. We're selling ourselves and future generations into slavery to the banks as when the government eventually wants to borrow money again, probably to join another war as that seems to be the only large new national project that occurs these days, then the banks can dictate where the public cuts will be made in order to pay them their interest.

 

What will bringing down the banks acheive? Well, the public, for once, will be in the driving seat. We can insist that the government lends money from the the Bank of England without having to pay interest on those loans. We could insist that the government outlaws usury as a means of profit-making.

 

The public would be able to use banks for free rather than paying interest on loans whilst the private banks would make money by charging a competetive fee to companies for the much better service they provide them anyway. We can also insist on transparency regarding who the banks deal with therefore allowing us to make informed decisions.

 

We could legally separate merchant from commercial banking thus ensuring our savings are safe from casino banking and we could insist that the fractional reserve system either goes or is dependant upon 50%+ of reserves being held as real money in the bank rather than the current -10%.

 

Finally we could insist upon a better standard of education in schools with regard to what money really is, how banking works and an overview of the history of the private banking cartels (for example, how the British manipulated the US currency by creating and dumping huge numbers of forged notes into the US during the war for independance) thus ensuring that the 'bewildered herd' as the bankers and politicians like to refer to us as is too well-informed to allow this to happen again.

 

And that is exactly what we have done, moved to a Building Society, you need to vote with your feet. If we pulled out of the wars where one piece of explosive can be half a million quids worth, stop all MP perks stop David Cameron spending money on useless surveys like happiness, not only would we be happy, we would have practically cleared our debt