Banks Withdraw Tracker Mortgages, What an Odd Job?
Happenstance, Circumstance or Co-incidence?
In Ian Fleming’s “Goldfinger”, the villain, Auric Goldfinger uses part of the above phrase after bumping into James Bond several times. The second time he actually says to Mister Bond;
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action
In this article (Warning signs that may force committee to think big) from yesterday, Larry Elliott of the Guardian lists his probabilities for the next possible Bank of England interest rate change, later in the day.
The Base Lending Rate, since Labour gave the responsibility to the Bank of England shortly after the 1997 landslide election, is set by a bunch of folk called the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). They meet every month and almost without exception, by definition, are career economists to some degree. This means, by definition, that they’ve had close ties to all the financial shenanigans that have brought us the global chaos we now are enduring.
Mysteriously, the day before yesterday, virtually all banks withdrew their tracker mortgages. The rest followed suit late yesterday. The Abbey even put up tracker rates!
Lenders pull tracker ranges ahead of likely cut in rates
Co-incidentally, the rate shot down a virtually unprecedented 1.5% straight afterwards!
BANK RATE CUT CAUSES CHAOS, Banks under pressure to cut rates
So apart from some initial speculation like here, the only people who knew about this big rate cut were the MPC and maybe the Chancellor Alistair Darling, the Prime Minister Brown and any secret service folk listening in on private conversations….
Lloyds TSB & Northern Rock were some that withdrew tracker rates ahead of the MPC meeting. Many others have made them unattainable by the kind of folk that currently have them (~90% of mortgages!) BTW, I’m one of the 10% that have a SVR mortgage :roll: Trackers are unobtainable to the many because of pecunious LTV ratios which, because of the property slump, many people cannot achieve.
Now get your crystal ball out, and look forward a few years and see where these people, (who had a good chance of real knowledge about the rate changes), are working. Check them through here, and then later decide, that if now, there has been a conflict of interest.
Don’t decide now, the waters are too muddy. But they will clear with the passage of time. Adam Smith‘s “Wealth of Nations” makes this clear when he says that even though all people act through personal greed, the free market self regulates this for the common good. In this process, motives, quite often, are only recognised well after an event.
It’s Adam Smith’s creed that we’ve been operating under for some years now.
Amazon Related:
- Recession Will Hit UK Hardest Of All In Europe - EU Banks warned that they would not pass on all rate cuts from the upcoming Bank...
- An interesting fixed-rate mortgage A good friend closed on land and a building loan today. He was telling me...
- Resisting Panic: A Quick Guide to Surviving The Credit Crunch A few years ago if you referenced the term "credit crunch", most people would be...
- Washington Mutual's Credit Rating Cut To Junk Status...Next To Go? Could WaMu be next?: The Seattle-based thrift late Thursday said it expected this quarter to...
- Federal Rate Cut Good or Bad? With the recent Federal rate cut, I am left wondering if this rate cut...
- Pay Debts in the Current Economic Climate In the third quarter of the year 2008, it was noted in figures that the...
- Inflation and Consumer Debt: Truth and Myth Personal finance writers frequently comment on how inflation will affect the average consumer. This topic...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7716086.stm
So far so good. But my bank (HSBC) isn’t there and they are extremely tardy about knocking their rates down anyway. They are supposed to be no more than 0.99% above BLR!
I think I’ll be talking to messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne before long. I have a contract you know!
Like or Dislike:
0
0
[...] Today found this great post, here is a quick excerpt : banks withdraw tracker mortgages: happenstance, circumstance or co-incidence? in ian fleming’s “goldfinger”, the villain, auric goldfinger uses part of the above after bumping into james bond several times. the second time he actually … Read the rest of this great post Here [...]
Like or Dislike:
0
0