There's another hand in your wallet...

[Him Her]

...sad but true. RBS are set to take a fine for the part they played in the Libor rate rigging scandal but guess who's paying? Yep, YOU are! That is, the taxpayer will pick up the bill as it is the majority shareholder.

Taxpayers face £500m bill for RBS Libor fraud - UK Politics - UK - The Independent

Or, to put it another way, the majority haven't got a clue the extent to which they get financially cheated on a daily basis.

Look at QE (Quantitative Easing) - there's a good explanation here - Quantitative Easing explained - but in a nutshell, if an economy flags cut interest rates to encourage borrowing. If that doesn't work, print money to encourage lending - it's a tried and tested system! Well actually, it's not, it's NEVER been tried in the UK prior to 2008. We are the great experimental QE centre of Europe.

QE costs YOU money, it forces inflation into different areas or, if you prefer, it deflates your cash. Hence, prices go up but your income doesn't. So who is paying for QE - YOU, again!

Then there's the so-called 'predatory pricing' - the reduction of prices to lure new customers in. Existing customers are excluded obviously. Actually, predatory pricing is illegal in its more extreme forms but these deals are 'special offers' so they're okay! You don't need a link - check banks and utility companies for good examples.

Financial advice? Forget the banks and the financial advisers, they'll sell you whatever makes the most money for THEM. Now the banks are being forced to be more transparent about charging and remove the 'add-ons' from accounts you can expect more 'targeted' advertising from both banks and the organisations they sell your details to - Banks spy on customers to sell targeted online advertising | This is Money.

And the headlines again? Nick Clegg to support change in succession laws...hang on, I'll have to go, there's a Local Authority Inspector wants to check my pot-plant for a passport or summat...

 

[Spectre]

Plant can stay due to right to family life.

 

[D 8 RCS]

Or, to put it another way, the majority haven't got a clue the extent to which they get financially cheated on a daily basis.

Financial advice? Forget the banks and the financial advisers, they'll sell you whatever makes the most money for THEM.

Years ago I worked as a "Financial Consultant" (as most preferred to call themselves, and they got annoyed when I said we're Insurance Salesmen) for several large companies, the basic wage was very poor but the commissions paid for sales made it possible to earn huge amounts.
I made a good living at this by manipulating the way the company paid commission for certain types of product and the way the customer paid for them, and many in my office could not understand how I could earn so much without being one of the top salesmen each month.
I always stated that I would not sell a product that I would not be prepared to buy myself and would only sell what a customer needed or wanted, although if what they wanted was not right for them or not good value I would advise them so.
Unfortunately the majority of the others would only sell what made them the highest commission, and the companies encouraged this and in many cases gave extra bonuses for selling such products.
In the end I was being pressured into selling these products and rather than compromise my standards I left the business.
Strangely, at the time "With Profits" policies were one of the safest policies for the customer who did not want to take a risk.............but was also one of the lowest commission paying policies, so became one of the lowest selling products which may well have been the reason for the collapse of "With Profit" policies.

 

[oneman]

Look at QE (Quantitative Easing) - there's a good explanation here - Quantitative Easing explained - but in a nutshell, if an economy flags cut interest rates to encourage borrowing. If that doesn't work, print money to encourage lending - it's a tried and tested system! Well actually, it's not, it's NEVER been tried in the UK prior to 2008. We are the great experimental QE centre of Europe.

It may not have been tried in the UK prior to the 2007 crash but QE has been used by US and Japan and ECB.

 

[Him Her]

It may not have been tried in the UK prior to the 2007 crash but QE has been used by US and Japan and ECB.

True, and in each of those cases the electorate got the bill, any benefits are yet to be seen.

The only minor difference lies with Japan and the new political regime which intends to invest in infrastructure rather than make lending available to organisations that simply don't want it.

In effect, there's an extra hand in my wallet that I can't influence and can't remove...