If that is true...
... you still need to establish why in such a way as to foreclose counterarguments. You need also to establish that the banks are guilty of it.

Please, feel free.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 13:23, 1 reply)

If I may anwser that for him...
...then preying on the vunerable:

I once had an email from a middle aged lady who was disabled. She also had two kids, one of which was disabled as well. Her disability developed later in life, before I start an argument about the pros and cons of sterilising disabled people.

Her husband had left and to date has not been tracked down when their second child was born.

She had emailed me from a public library (one of the few still open no doubt) in the middle of winter. She couldn't afford to heat her flat or feed her family. She had half a box of cornflakes, which they were taking turns each day eating.

I know this is looking like a proper sob story, the type of thing the Mail would dish out at this time of year, but bear with me, unlike the Mail this story is true, and I met with her. I received many letters and emails very similar to this, for reasons that I won't go into here.

There was a cock-up with her recieving disibility benefits that she was entitled to; they arrived late. Her gas and electric were both paid for by Direct Debit as on one of them she received a 5% discount for paying this way.

Of course, after being more-or-less forced into recieving these benefits into a bank account she had no control over when payments come in or went out.

She went to the bank to explain that her benefit payment was going to be late and she was told not to worry as it was clear from their records that this money had been going into her account on the same day for a long time.

One of the direct debits bounced. One was paid.

She was charged 39 quid for each. (You can probably work out which bank it was from that too)

Her benefit payments equalled 80 quid a week.

She still had to find the money to pay the DD that was bounced to the company as well.

Bang goes eating and heating for the first week then.

Spoke to the bank. Their answer was to give her an overdraft of 80 quid - very nice of them you might think.

Only, the charges didn't stop there.

Those 39 quid charges were only the tip of the iceberg. She was charged for two DDs bouncing AND going into an unauthorised overdraft (although how such a thing is unauthorised when the bank allowed it to happen is surely an oxymoron). So on top of the 2x39 she was charged another 35 quid, and then an arrangement fee.

This wasn't the end of it by a long shot, but this post is becoming extremely long.

To cut a long story short, she ended up with over 200 quids worth of charges through no fault of her own, and now also an overdraft with interest that would make Vanquis weep.

Now, that, I would say is preying on the vulnerable.

After a while, if I hadn't stepped in and put this situation right, she would have been in a position where the debt was worsening and she would have to have made a choice between paying them back or eating/heating and becoming a 'bad debtor'.

To that end, fractional reserve banking should be stopped. If they could only lend what they have in true reserve, they would need it back and might think twice about putting people in a position where they have to make such a choice.
(dchurch bah, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 19:18, closed)

that isn't really the argument though
The argument isn't about whether it's fair or acceptable, it's about whether it's right. The bank is a business and, as such, is out to make money. If that means that vulnerable people get screwed over then that's pretty horrible, yes, but it doesn't necessarily mean the bank has acted incorrectly.

The questions I'm posing on this thread are not to do with whether or not a bank is being nasty. I'm interested in justification as to why the bank should or shouldn't behave this way - saying "because they shouldn't" does not satisfy my curiosity. Who decides they shouldn't? Why? And if anyone is able to tell me who, then can they also tell me why I have to go along with that?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 20:55, closed)

No
but it was an answer to the question, "prove banks act immorally" (or words to that effect).

...but in answer to your question:

Banks shouldn't be allowed to do as they please, simply because people who don't even use banks are being punished by way of taxes to pay for their shortcomings, short-sightedness and greed - and that is unfair. It's not right for a business sector to be in a position where their mistakes and greed can affect the lives of millions of people.

If anything that has the potential to cause harm to others is illegal, then this should also be covered.

The people who SHOULD decide are our elected representatives (don't get me started on the illusion of democracy) - just because they didn't/haven't done so, doesn't mean that they have got it right.

The banks here are even worse than the US ones in as much as here, regulations were relaxed allowing them to do pretty much as they please, but with a 'voluntary code of practice', in the US, they were forced into lending to people who they knew couldn't afford it by law (as it would be to discriminate against people to refuse)

Sadly, we are all forced to live in the society we are born into. You pay taxes, and in turn you expect a level of service (fire, police, government etc...)

Unless you live in a tent in a common-land field and live off the land, you have unwittingly agreed to live in that society. In return for that level of service, you agree to abide by laws.

If it were not for the law, would you agree that it's ok to steal an old ladies bag off the bus? Of course not - to take that to the extreme level, anarchy would rule and we'd be back in the stone age.

You could also say the same about immigration and land ownership - who is to say that people just cannot come and go as they please?

You don't have to go along with anything, but I think you'll find it pretty hard not to in this country.

If you agree to live by the rules of 'society' which you have done, then you are expected to live by those rules, and to expect a level of service in return.

Sometimes, one faction doesn't live up to it's end of the bargain.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 7:52, closed)

are you one of thoese people
who wants tobacco banned? Shops sell it and profit from it and it can cause nasty diseases and death, but currently the choice is there for the consumer to purchase it. They may well be vulnerable and addicted to it. Should there be laws preventing it being offered?

So where is the line drawn? How much autonomy should people be given?

It is possible to function without a bank account. It isn't easy, but it's perfectly possible and many people do it.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 9:36, closed)

Not
at all. I don't advocate the banning of anything.

...but if the remit of the government is that anything harmful is banned (as seems to be becoming the case with smoking), then fractional reserve banking must also be covered by the same cloak.

I'm actually extremely libertarian in my views.

Banks should be left to their own devices, however, that said, they should not be able to operate in a cartel. If they operate on their own devices, the market will dictate that they act in a more humanitarian way.

The banks should be regulated so that they are unable to act as a cartel.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:21, closed)

But they are
And they haven't been. There's no cartel here.

And faith in the market relies on consumers who have the time, inclination, information (and ability to process that information) to know the score and make wise decisions. They lack all of these on the whole.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:33, closed)

I don't believe
that there isn't a cartel operating in this instance. I strongly believe that we have a banking cartel.

The fact that those virtues are lacking is evidence even more so that the banks have the upper hand, and therefore the responsibility that goes with it. To exploit people who do not possess the time, etc... to make the informed decisions that they should/could have is, by definition immoral (morals being defined as having a measure of beneficence - i.e. they have to make a decision that is best for their client).
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:39, closed)

That's a very big claim
I simply don't see why proper behaviour has to imply beneficence.

Nor do I see why a bank's first responsibility should be to the client. Legally, the first responsibility is to the shareholders. Morally, too, there's an argument that it ought to be shareholders who are the first concern.

Why on Earth should a company - or individual - be forced to act charitably? In idividuals, that seems supererogatory. In companies, it might well be downright wrong.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:44, closed)

I'm not
asking them to act charitably, but I do ask that they act morally.

If banks HAD acted in a more moralistic way, then they may not have lent money to those than can not afford to pay it back, and in this instance, they may well be still providing profits to their shareholders.

By acting the way they have, you could claim that they have acted in a way that is NOT beneficial to their shareholders and have not upheld that responsibility.

I'm pretty sure a shareholder in a bank does not want that bank to be in a position where it expects the taxpayer to bail them out of certain bankrupcy.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:56, closed)

Incidently
I do operate without a bank account. It's far more difficult to do than you would imagine. In many respects you are actually punished for choosing not to have a bank account.

My girlfriend is penalised because of my choice as well - she is not allowed a debit card on her bank account because of my lack of credit history, despite the fact that I do very well thank you very much and hence the reason for not ever needing credit. We are financially linked somehow (apparently) according to one of those private firms who somehow have access to records of my financial dealings.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:25, closed)

You can be de-linked.
I expect you know this since you are into this stuff, but there is no reason for her to be liable for your credit history if you do not share debts. It's a matter of asking for the record to be changed.

My boyfriend also has no bank account. He has poor credit history and his earnings are way below the poverty line. I am all too aware of the trade off between eating/heating.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:45, closed)

It's
(again) extremely difficult to be de-linked by all three, it's not simply a matter of 'asking' trust me. Indeed, I actually had to sue one of the bigger 2 before I could get them to agree to my abide by my legal right NOT to have my personal information given out in an automated search.

That, in fact, is another abuse of the system that they themselves set up.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:53, closed)

None of your story is evidence of immorality
It's evidence of something bad happening, but badness isn't sufficient to establish wrongness. There might be a perfectly good explanation for event E, in which case it would no longer be blameable, therefore no longer wrong.

What happened in your anecdote was bad, but it doesn't follow from that that there's any blame to be distributed.


Your claims about social contract baffle me, btw.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 9:40, closed)

I'm not
sure why you are confused.

I'm also not sure why you say that there is no blame to be distributed.

Morals are defined and created by society. To be immoral means to act without 'proper' behaviour.

To recklessly push people into life threatening debt without considering the repercussions is not proper behaviour as defined by the society in which we live, therefore, the way in which banks have operated is, ergo, immoral.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:22, closed)

...
I'm confused becasue your claims about social contract came from out of nowhere, and seem to have no direct link to the discussion.

I didn't say that there's no blame to be distributed. I said that you have to establish that there is before you can talk about badness equalling wrongness. The mere presence of badness doesn't generate a cause for blame. (When the surgeon leaves a scar, that's bad. It doesn't follow that it's wrong. So badness and blameability, though often related, are separable. The same could well apply here.)

The idea that morality is simply a matter of social fiat has never convinced me; and, again, you're being unrealistically simplistic in your description of the situation. Not all consequences are foreseen or intended.

Indeed - the protagonist of your story may simply be unlucky. After all, we'd expect banks to act dispassionately, wouldn't we? We'd want the same rules to apply to everyone. Now, this may mean that some people get into trouble. But it's practically, and morally, much more problematic to try to come up with different rules and exceptions for everyone. That is: there's no reason to assume that the banks have been reckless with a particular customer, or pushed them into problems intentionally. What seems much more likely is that there's one set of rules, and an open market. That banks don't monitor each and every account and make exceptions ad hoc seems to be completely straightforward.


Just for the record, I'm no lover of the free market. But I do think that if we're going to make a moral claim about the way it operates, it behoves us to get things straight to begin with.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:41, closed)

It seemed
to me that there was an argument leading the way of "who owns land" in as much as "who says I have to abide by the way society is laid out" - that was the point of the social contract argument.

I agree that a set of rules exists and that they are applied equally to every one of their customers - the fact that those rules are very deliberatly designed to push people into debt that they cannot afford, and that those rules are operated by ALL banks (and thus the cartel element) is fighting against morals as defined by the way we live. Morals HAVE been defined, and most arguments on here seem to suggest that they haven't been. To act in a way that is detremental to the whole of society and the banks own customers IS immoral as it breaks with these definitions.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:51, closed)

...
I still don't know what you mean by social definition. Different members of a society will have different accounts of rightness and wrongness. Talking about what society as a whole thinks is therefore specious - it doesn't think anything, and what its members think is often fractious.

But suppose for the moment that there is an aggregate social view, and that that does determine what morality is. That'd imply that it was wrong to think differently, or for that view to change, since it'd necessarily involve moving away from "the right". It'd also probably be incoherent, since it's possible that public virtues such as wealth rest on private vices. Some things are for the public good - but public goodness isn't much of an incentive for private individuals.


Your accusation that banks are deliberately putting people into debt is huge and unsubstantiated. Another way to view it is that they're selling money in the form of credit, and if people buy credit they can't afford, that's foolish in exactly the same way as is buying a kitchen they can't afford. That's the consumer's problem: you can't blame the seller for that, can you?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:01, closed)

It's
not unsustantiated.

I have proof, and in fact was involved very heavily with a BBC programme which was aired about a year ago, called "The Whistle Blower".

I have absolute proof that his goes on, and I have circumstantial proof, and two witnesses that an 'unofficial' cartel is operating between the largest 8 banks in the UK with regards to 'price fixing' with charges, insurance etc... Admittely, with this part there is nothing set in stone and nothing that anyone should take seriously, until that proof becomes more solid at least.

These claims are NOT unsubstantiated at all. If they were, do you think the BBC (and Sky News/Five) would have run with the story on national TV? These are corperations/companies that would actually sympathise with the banking industry, yet faced with the proof that I provided STILL went ahead.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:08, closed)

Right.
Now we're getting somewhere.

You've gone some way to establishing a factual claim. Nevertheless, that won't tell us anything morally important on its own. There's a huge difference between a fact and a value.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:12, closed)

The
fact that a national broadcaster ran with the story, despite the fact that the law says it's perfectly acceptable to do as they did, should surely show that society in the main see the way those particular banks acted as imoral?

If 'good' is defined by majority rule that is.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:16, closed)