So, the Government has decided to prop up the banks to the tune of £50 billion. That’s about £800 for every man, woman and child in the country. The reason? Well, they have made some bad lending
decisions, and have lost some money. Had their greed paid off, and the sub-prime market not come crashing down around their ears, they would no doubt now have all been announcing record profits and congratulating themselves with seven figure bonuses for the directors.
Now, as we all know, if this happened to any other business, to any of the 250,000 or so SME’s in this country, it would simply be hard cheese. You don’t make profits, your business decisions go wrong, you simply shut up shop. Not so with the banks.
Notwithstanding the fact that they cost the small business community a whopping £100 million last year due to errors in processing overseas payments, they are now rubbing salt into the wounds by battening down the hatches on genuine funding needs in the SME community, making it even harder for the struggling small business to get any financial help at all.
From where I sit, the situation is even more galling. 4X was set up without any help from the banks. They wouldn’t lend us a penny, for the simple reason that we would be in direct competition with them by providing the business community with cheaper and more efficient FX services than they were prepared to offer. Nor did we get any government funding or grants. The whole lot was financed out of our own pockets, which has meant growing slower than we’d like to, not to mention a pretty austere personal life for the last few years. We haven’t been able to afford to make any mistakes.
Yet now, I am effectively being asked to subsidise those same competitors, whose greed and incompetence should be their own downfall. With £800 of my taxes! What other industry would get treatment like that? What if we all start going cap in hand to Mr Darling every time we stuff up our business decisions? I can just imagine his reaction. I tell you it makes my blood boil every time I think about it.
And the really sickening thing? I can’t even go on holiday and forget about it all for a couple of weeks, because I just don’t have a spare £800….
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