One of our loyal readers Peter sent this is in. Thanks Peter.
“I was listening to radio 4 on the way home from work tonight and heard a report regarding Northern Rock’s directors answering questions in front of a commons select committee today regarding the recent financial crisis at their institution. The directors did not have a happy time by all accounts, but one comment did cause me a wry smile to myself as to how disconnected these people are from their customers. This is verbatim by the way (check out the listen again feature on Radio 4’s web site if you want to listen, it is about 33 minutes in to Tuesdays edition of PM
Michael Fallon MP (Cons) of the Select Committee addressing Matt Ridley (chairman of Northern Rock) following Matt Ridley’s statement that Northern Rock
“We were hit by an unexpected and unpredictable concatenation of events”
MF: “So you’re the chairman of a bank that ran out of money, caused the first bank run in this country for 150 years, You’ve had to borrow billions of public money from the Bank of England, You’ve damaged the name, the good name, of British banking, Why are you still clinging to office?”
MR: “I (stumbles) would like to say to you now that what has happened has been extremely distressing to us as it has been to our other stakeholder, employees, and creditors, (er ah) In view of what’s happened I am extremely keen to turn the situation around and develop a stable future for Northern Rock, I’m working night and day to achieve that. I am at the behest of the board and if they think they can do better by asking for my resignation it will be available to them”
Following on from this it appears that the run on NR was caused, amongst other things, by the BBC reporting the story before NR were ready.
I trust the “distress” felt by the board or Northern Rock was of a similar nature to that which has been felt by it’s customers who have run in to financial difficulties, though as I’m fairly sure the fact that their houses and assets are secure and nice pay offs are to be had if they are sacked mitigates their distress somewhat.”
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Yes Peter, I too almost lost control of the car when I heard that as well. Actually it was because I was laughing so hard at the irony. Because when a consumer runs into an unexpected financial situation, turns to an Insolvency Practitioner for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) and turns to The Rock for help they don’t seem to be receptive.
I suggest that people start using the line, “We were hit by an unexpected and unpredictable concatenation of events”, when Northern Rock debt collectors ask them for payment. Let me know how that goes over.
The other part that made me laugh was when the board said they would be willing to resign but investors wanted them to stay. Really!
And blaming the crisis on an unexpected turn of events, I mean come on, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out there is significant inherent risk when your business model is based on borrowing money from others to fuel your business. As far as I’m concerned, Dr. Ridley and Applegarth should get an F- for lack of creativity in blaming the bank crisis on “we couldn’t see the risk.” What’s next, “the dog ate the business plan.”
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And while I’m on the subject of banks, there was a guy in the US that could not apply for a credit card because his last name was O and no computer would accept a one letter last name. Damn his parents, how inconsiderate. He had to legally change his last name to Oh.
Yesterday my bank asked me to choose a new security question from a list. I selected “What was the name of your childhood friend?” and plugged in my answer. The high security bank site said “Must be more than three letters.”
So apparently it is my fault that I did not find a friend with more than three letters in his name when I was 7? Let that be a lesson to you, avoid making friends with anyone with only three letters in their first name.
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I’m still curious why my business bank account has three passwords, a cipher key fob that generates a random password and a random click screen and picture identification login process but the same bank for my personal account is just username and password.
Is my bank assuming that criminals only go after business accounts?
When something bad happens with personal accounts let’s just hope that the bank answer isn’t going to be “We didn’t see that coming” because if that’s what they say I’ll probably soil myself from laughing so hard. I just hope I’m not driving when I hear that on the radio.