The Great Tracker Mortgages Robbery

[Main Street]

Is the 'crime' not that the banks were 'advising' customers that foregoing their tracker mortgages was a better financial option for them (their customers)?  Which it wasn't.

I don't think so. At the time the ECB rate was relatively high and so switching from the tracker for a fixed period made obvious sense. The unwillingness to allow lenders to revert to the tracker is the issue I'm aware of.

Surely this is the point though - they were told they would be able to revert and when they wanted to they were told different, is that not correct?

either way the borrower made a choice maybe a bad one but their choice.
as for bad advice what the difference between that and a car sales man telling you that a Toyota is better than a Volkswagen or a Skoda, it still buyer beware .
my reading is that everyone knows they banks are a soft target  and any kind of pressure can be put on them and with all the stage booing and hissing and they're own vurnerable state cpuld very well make them five in .

f some one has written evidence that they would be allowed back on a tracker then they have a very good chance in a courtroom of getting compensation and should do that otherwise its just hearsay even then it would be a breach of contract rather than a Crime?

The Capitalist  recovery system was a bail of of the institution of the bank to the benefit of   Account holders Big and small   and the Bond holders. all the top guys got sacked (except for boucher who brought BOI back to profitability and repaid all GOV Monies) the shareholders got slaughtered, and cheques were honered and the bondholders kept issuing loans and the world went on after a few bumpy months/years

Even the banks themselves are not as enthusiastic in defence of their actions as yourself. In fact, they've stopped defending them, admitted that they were wrongful, agreed to refund the money embezzled and are considering the level of compensation that will be  offered. You don't compensate somebody for doing them good or for an action that is not wrongful.

"Wrongful" is simply a weasel word for "criminal" in this case, since, as I said in a previous post, obtaining money bywrongful means is theft.

The law is not applied equally.
The main reason for that in the USA  is the "collateral consequences doctrine"
Also, individual bank clerk culpability is hard to nail down.

From Matt Taibbi's book "The Divide,
Europe's largest bank HSBC admitted to laundering $850 million p/a for drug cartels, the executives who were proven beyond doubt to have made those decisions, lost their rights to bonuses for 5 years, the bank was fined USD1.8bn,  Nobody went to jail

Meanwhile on the street of New York  some man had been jailed for 45 days for having a joint in his pocket. It's not illegal to have a joint concealed in the pocket but when stopped and searched under NY state's  draconian  'disorderly conduct statute', the man's pockets were emptied and the joint was no longer concealed.
In this exact way, 50,000 arrests (marijuana joint busts) were made  even though marijuana was technically decriminalised. The court's penalty is jail time or pay a fine. Thousand of citizens have been arrested on other equally absurd charges under that statute  e.g."obstructing pedestrian traffic" and forced to pay fines of $100 or face jail.

Somehow "they" have managed to merge the interests of the importance of banking to the economy and conflating that with not jailing bank executives.
That arises from what's called the "collateral consequences doctrine".
In the USA, this doctrine dates back to the "Holder Memo" from the deputy attorney general  in the 1999 Clinton administration.
'If the prosecutor who's targeting one of these big corporate offenders is worried that it may affect innocent victims, that shareholders or innocent executives may lose their jobs, the prosecutor may consider other alternatives, other remedies besides criminal prosecutions—in other words, fines, non-prosecution agreements, deferred prosecution agreements.'

[Franko]

It's amazing how blinded people are by theories that have utterly as and completely failed. Just as communism drastically failed in Eastern Europe and many other places, capitalism has spectacularly failed throughout the developed world. Globalisation has been a disaster and many people who were cheerleaders for it initially accept it has been a mess. The trouble with economic theories are they are just that - theories - and any stringent application of them is pretty much guaranteed to fail. They are not scientific despite some claims that they are, they are just opinions and need to be treated as that. The hilarious Irish groupthink (even after bailing out the banks and covering 43% of Europe's banking debt) of capitalism good, socialism bad is so nonsensical it drives me crazy. Elements of both theories have merit and should be factored into decision making but rigid adherence is just plain stupid.

Once we were forced to nationalise the banks we should have maintained control until we were 100% sure everything was cleaned up and we could never, ever be caught like that again. I think we've been too quick to re-privatise.

Where in the developed world has it failed? Has it failed in the developing world?

You can't be serious?

I'm deadly serious. Sure capitalism can be corrupt in places, but it's better able to recover from corruption than any alternative that's been tried. Trust me, I've been to the Soviet Union and their system did not work. Capitalism works best when corporations are small enough that they can go to the wall without having to be bailed out. The recent bailouts we saw were not capitalism in action, that was private profits and socialized losses.

As for the developing world, billions of people in China and India have been lifted out of poverty by globalization. Not many western politicians want to say that out loud because it's not a popular view, but it's an indisputable fact.

I'm sorry Eamonn, but when losses have to be socialised to prevent the breakdown of society in general, capitalism has indisputably failed.  True capitalism doesn't work.  Proper regulatory oversight is required to stop the RBS's and Anglo's of this world becoming so monstrously big and corrupt that they can almost bring down nations.

[magpie seanie]

It's amazing how blinded people are by theories that have utterly as and completely failed. Just as communism drastically failed in Eastern Europe and many other places, capitalism has spectacularly failed throughout the developed world. Globalisation has been a disaster and many people who were cheerleaders for it initially accept it has been a mess. The trouble with economic theories are they are just that - theories - and any stringent application of them is pretty much guaranteed to fail. They are not scientific despite some claims that they are, they are just opinions and need to be treated as that. The hilarious Irish groupthink (even after bailing out the banks and covering 43% of Europe's banking debt) of capitalism good, socialism bad is so nonsensical it drives me crazy. Elements of both theories have merit and should be factored into decision making but rigid adherence is just plain stupid.

Once we were forced to nationalise the banks we should have maintained control until we were 100% sure everything was cleaned up and we could never, ever be caught like that again. I think we've been too quick to re-privatise.

Where in the developed world has it failed? Has it failed in the developing world?

You can't be serious?

I'm deadly serious. Sure capitalism can be corrupt in places, but it's better able to recover from corruption than any alternative that's been tried. Trust me, I've been to the Soviet Union and their system did not work. Capitalism works best when corporations are small enough that they can go to the wall without having to be bailed out. The recent bailouts we saw were not capitalism in action, that was private profits and socialized losses.

As for the developing world, billions of people in China and India have been lifted out of poverty by globalization. Not many western politicians want to say that out loud because it's not a popular view, but it's an indisputable fact.

I'm sorry Eamonn, but when losses have to be socialised to prevent the breakdown of society in general, capitalism has indisputably failed.  True capitalism doesn't work.  Proper regulatory oversight is required to stop the RBS's and Anglo's of this world becoming so monstrously big and corrupt that they can almost bring down nations.

Exactly. It's hilarious that some people simply cannot see this.

[Eamonnca1]

I'm sorry Eamonn, but when losses have to be socialised to prevent the breakdown of society in general, capitalism has indisputably failed.  True capitalism doesn't work.  Proper regulatory oversight is required to stop the RBS's and Anglo's of this world becoming so monstrously big and corrupt that they can almost bring down nations.

I could not agree more. But it's regulatory oversight of a capitalist system. It wasn't capitalism itself that failed, it was a poorly regulated version of it. Lack of regulation was the issue here, not the fact that it was a capitalist system.

[rosnarun]

I'm sorry Eamonn, but when losses have to be socialised to prevent the breakdown of society in general, capitalism has indisputably failed.  True capitalism doesn't work.  Proper regulatory oversight is required to stop the RBS's and Anglo's of this world becoming so monstrously big and corrupt that they can almost bring down nations.

I could not agree more. But it's regulatory oversight of a capitalist system. It wasn't capitalism itself that failed, it was a poorly regulated version of it. Lack of regulation was the issue here, not the fact that it was a capitalist system.

in what way did it fail. it has had problems but it did not fail. we are now back in a similar position to pre crash . a good seat belt wont stop you crashing but will go a long way to ensure you are not killed in the process

[magpie seanie]

I'm sorry Eamonn, but when losses have to be socialised to prevent the breakdown of society in general, capitalism has indisputably failed.  True capitalism doesn't work.  Proper regulatory oversight is required to stop the RBS's and Anglo's of this world becoming so monstrously big and corrupt that they can almost bring down nations.

I could not agree more. But it's regulatory oversight of a capitalist system. It wasn't capitalism itself that failed, it was a poorly regulated version of it. Lack of regulation was the issue here, not the fact that it was a capitalist system.

I don't think you really understand capitalism reading the above.