Randomly Selected Article or Link

Here starteth the saga of my dealings with a bunch of sharks who are a subsidiary of "The World's Local Bank". I don't want to bleat too much - the usual rebuttals that "you should have read the small print" apply and I've been foolish. But I do want to warn others if I can to take a more circumspect view of dealing with HFC Bank.

Sine I live in halls of residence, and have done now for over ten years as a warden, getting credit is sometimes difficult. In fact getting anything that requires some nit-wit to rely on the electronic vomit coming out of an automated search using postal details. The Post Office and the local electoral roll office have never, in all that time, got my and my fellow wardens' addresses quite right.

I don't exist on those databases that insurance companies use to give you a quote, or the National Lottery use to give you an account, and I can't find myself on Equifax and so on. So I am quite precious about my dealings with people who rely on this information. It has helped me be more responsible towards my bank - because I know if I had to cut and run to another bank they would have the same difficulties. I haven't switched from Vodafone because none of the other operators, without the benefit of ten years' worth of account history with them, can find me.

And so, about eight years ago I was pleased to be able to buy a Hi-Fi on a year's interest free credit. One of those deals where you pay the full amount at the end of the year or begin paying installments with interest. Well of course when the time fell due I didn't quite have the full amount so started paying installments. After a while I started getting sales brochures from HFC Bank, with whom the credit had been arranged (even if it wasn't in that name when I did so I don't think) suggesting I transfer the debt to some kind of "personal loan plus" which would give me the ability to add more credit to it as I wanted. Stupidly, I did.

Then, when I was nearing the limit on that arrangement they started pestering me by phone to come in and talk about changing it to a proper unsecured personal loan. Well, I did. I was and am still not a "distressed debtor" but the interest rate was bonkers and they were offering to reduce the rate and payments and so on. I checked up with my own bank and they didn't feel that they could lend me the money so I went along with HFC's recommendations.

I fully expected to be in better circumstances a short way into the loan and to be able to settle early, so I specifically asked about that and was told something like "oh you'll just pay off the balance and a month's interest" or something like that. So I opted for a long loan, 84 months, to reduce the payments in the short term with the intention of then clearing the debt early - because whilst it was indeed a lower interest rate than I had on the extended store credit it was still high by anyone's standards (higher even than they had suggested to entice me through the door in fact).

Now that point has arrived. I've paid 36 months out of 84 months, that's 3/7th of the loan period. I've paid 36 times £364.81 for a total to date of £13,133 and some change. The original loan was for £15,000. I would expect therefore to have been paying a mix of principle, interest and payment protection premium right the way through that period and for a settlement figure to be around 36/84ths of the original amount borrowed of £15,000. Around £8,500.

Now, apart from the fact that they seem more reluctant to give me a settlement figure than they were to entice me through their doors in the first place, I ifnally yesterday got someone to give me an indicative figure over the phone. If you noticed a small earthquake in the east Oxford area around 17:30 last night it will have been my jaw hitting the floor as I was told £12,900 and something.

Now, I'm not completely financially illiterate (though no doubt many of their other suckers of customers are not as well informed or aware as I can be), just have been fairly blase and irresponsible about my own circumstances over the years. But I cannot work out where such a figure might possibly come from. It's not 48/84ths of the entire cost of the loan including interest, but it's closer to that than to the balance remaining of the principle. I suspect they are doing something like front loading their interest and all the other charges, which was not clear at the time (though no doubt clear under a microscope at 100x magnification in a microdot somewhere on the terms and conditions of the loan) - and remember, I did make clear at the time that i was looking to repay it early even before I had taken it out.

So, if anyone else is offered a nice cup of tea in their plush offices wherever you live, look very very carefully in that particular horse's mouth. It would appear that this loan is simply not worth paying off early and that I'm stuck shelling out £30,000+ for what was a £15,000 loan, or £364 per month for the next four years. It seems they take the most vulnerable, the so called "sub-prime" market, and not only charge them an extortionate interest rate (in my case 14.9% APR) but front load the debt so that early settlement is not really worth doing.

I am no fan of banks at the best of times, and HFC of course does not even have depositors or current accounts so is a perfect example of banks making money out of thin air - nobody can possibly argue with me that their balance sheet matches up savers with lenders or anything of the sort, but if HSBC believe this is acceptable behaviour for a member of their global banking group, I'm disgusted.

It's not that I am usually a luddite. Nor do I necessarily mourn the fact that workers have priced themselves out of a job. But there is something very sad about the Telegraph's story that the Symington port family is to phase out crushing grapes by gangs of human feet:

Centuries of port heritage ended by family firm

The world's oldest and largest port producer is finally trampling on 2,000 years of agricultural history.

The Symington family, which has been making port since 1652, has announced that it will no longer crush its grapes under foot.

The saddest part is surely that:

While the robots are an expensive investment, they can do the job at any time of the day or night - and don't need the encouragement of an accompanying musician.

Will port wine ever be the same without the local folk tunes of Portugal being instilled into it at birth I wonder?

It has been estimated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between them underwrite debt of some $5,000,000,000,000 and that US losses from the current credit crunch could amount to $1,600,000,000,000.

The entire external debt obligations of the world's 40 odd Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) is some $300,000,000,000 - that's about 6% of Fannie and Freddie's problems. So any bailout of the US mortgage system is going to amount almost certainly to more money than would write off all that, mainly African, debt (were that the best way to proceed, which I believe it is, with conditions).

By contrast the EU has today decided to support the idea of giving the surplus it has made on the Common Agricultural Policy as a result of rising food crop prices (so it has been subsidising less) to "African farmers". That's about €1,000,000,000 - or one three-thousandth of Fannie and Freddie's problems and two hundredths of Africa's problems.

But where did they get that money from, how did it arise? Robbing those very African farmers by denying them access to our markets and subsidising dumping on theirs. Tariffs are pure evil, aren't they?

So, whenever anyone says to you that it's difficult to find the finance for debt relief in the poorest countries, you'll now know that is total bollocks.  Just think of the scale of the US mortgage debt and what such sums could do for the 600 million or so poorest on the planet.

Congratulations.

If any of the naysayers come across to Rome I may have to leave. One arrogant Messianic prick was nearly enough to make me leave.