Yesterday, the cashier at my bank made me an irresistible offer (I resisted it). For only £8.50 per month I could receive benefits of up to £500 a year. One reason I resisted it was that I'm not convinced, especially with low interest rates that I'd actually gain anything. Also I'm of a generation when banking was free unless you went overdrawn. But there was also another reason that was nagging at the back of mind.
I heard or read that traditional banking (making loans and charging interest) is not very profitable - this is one reason why bankers in recent years have taken the risks they have - in a search for more profit. It also rings true in the light of the reason we have credit unions. Small loans to poor people are not possible for large banks because they are too expensive to administer. You can see the attraction of £8.50 per month per customer to the banks (and why the cashier was so keen to sign me up). Come to think of it, she also gave me her card, which suggests she's under commission.
The story of the start of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is worth reflection. Muhammed Yunus, at the time a lecturer in an economics related subject, visited a rural village. He met a woman who made baskets; sale of her baskets realised enough money to feed her family and to purchase the raw materials the next day. Yunus realised that if she had a very small loan it would make her independent of the dealer. He asked his students to research how many others were in a similar position. When they added up the amount in loans the village needed it equaled less than the cash Yunus had in his wallet.
A letter in The Times yesterday claimed our problems as a nation were down to lack of moral fibre. To qualify for lack of moral fiber as far as I can tell you should be young and / or poor. How do we describe the person who sells mortgages to people who cannot repay them? Building societies are not permitted to do that, many of them turned into banks in recent years; unashamed asset stripping.
What do we make of the wealthy people with enormous bonuses awarded for asset stripping? How much of the government money given to bail out banks for their mistakes has found its way into off-shore accounts?
This combined erosion of organisations based on mutuality and of the assets of this country, for which people have for several decades been awarded, has disabled our government and undermined confidence in leadership. President Obama has an enormous task as the state of the US economy is down to the Republican project to destroy government institutions and asset strip them for personal gain.
Raise this in our churches and we are told that some Christians are bankers and so we cannot criticise those who are trying to inject some morality into the system. This is not good enough. We need a more sophisticated approach than this. There may be several reasons why the churches sit on the sidelines; it's time we identified these reasons and examine them together.
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