Morning:
9°c
On holiday in Greece last week I paused outside a newsagent to read a British front page. HBOS shares had crashed 48 per cent in a single day. Twenty-four hours later I learned my bank of 25 years was bust.
My money looks safe for now, assuming the Lloyds takeover goes through, but what happened to HBOS has broken my trust in banks. After a lifetime's loyalty I'm putting my cash elsewhere.
I'm not reacting to the latest crisis so much as a creeping realisation that banks haven't been protecting my savings for quite some time.
Instead, Bank of Scotland spent much of the past two decades trying to persuade me to take on debt, bombarding me with credit cards, loan offers and overdraft extensions I don't need.
And the more I see of what happens to my money once it's in the system, the less I want to help perpetuate this vast global gambling game that threatens to bring our economy to its knees.
Even so, I'm leaving Bank of Scotland with my suitcase of cash and a heavy heart. I opened my account as a teenager to deposit earnings from a weekend job as chambermaid. The branch was a red sandstone building in the middle of the village and the manager a pillar of the community.
Later, as a student, I remember negotiating in my bank manager's office to borrow the sum of £100. He agreed to it, but for a strict period of one month, and only once I'd convinced him of my ability to repay the amount in full.
Now it seems ridiculously quaint. But that's where I learned basic financial responsibility.
Yesterday, in a fit of nostalgia I called my branch to ask the name of my old manager. “I'm sorry,” I was told, “we're no longer authorised to give that information out. In any case, they chop and change and get seconded to other branches all the time.”
It sums up everything that's wrong with banks: an aversion to human contact, no bond of trust, zero stability. Exactly why should I continue to give them my money?
So I'm kissing goodbye to my sort code and going financially free-range. Premium Bonds seem the perfect solution to today's turbulence: the thrill of the casino without the risk I'll lose it all. And rather than undermine the economy, they help prop it up. That's what I call a bonus ball.
Reader views (1)
Quite right Charlotte. That anti-Union agitator Alex Salmond tries to portray Bank of Scotland as a victim of 'spivs' in the City, undoing all the expertise of Edinburgh bankers. He has been proved wrong on short-selling, which had a minimal role. Instead it was the stupidity of the banks like HBOS that got themselves into this mess, with their wreckless lending. HBOS, as you suggest, got what it deserved, and no amount of petty nationalism alters that reality.
- Niall Mccrae, London UK, 25/09/2008 14:01
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