Banks, Mortgages and Threats (Why governments need to grow a pair) | Blokes on the Blog

Sometimes you just wish the governments in the Eurozone would grow a pair and tell their paymasters where to get off. This is the case now with the Spanish government and banks. It is the same throughout the Eurozone of course. In the UK Vince Cable has talked about the banks being obstructive to the banking reforms and just saving up another crisis for the future. Here in Spain it is something more day to day.

The banks have been let off from the crisis that they created by using our money to speculate wildly in the hope of making more money for their shareholders. When they bet on black and it ended up seriously in the red they were bailed out all over the World, their debts were passed onto governments who bailed them out and those governments pass the pain onto the people. The banks escaped virtually unscathed and now through their artificial, supposedly independent, ratings agencies they then have the temerity to act as they are doing now by raising any rates of lending to prohibitive levels, meaning they are making record profits again in many cases.

So what is special about Spain? Well the banks in Spain avoided the credit default swaps that brought down banks in the States and other parts of Europe because they were too busy giving credits for building in Spain, or rather overbuilding in Spain. In order to then fill these houses and apartments that they were financing, in the most inappropriate places at times, they allowed credit to be given to anyone, usually by manipulating valuations and encouraging everyone to get a mortgage with ridiculously cheap credit but onerous terms that were never explained to the clients.

{Read the rest of this post at the link below}

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