Shed a tear for the banks? You've got to be joking
Feeling no sympathy for bank employees stuck in this mess? You're not alone.
If you've recently found yourself uttering this phrase: "I've got no sympathy for out-of-work bank employees", then the Mirror's Fiona McIntosh may be after you. In her view, the current crisis that is striking down banks, legalised loan sharks and financial institutions is not just hitting top managers and shareholders. "This is about real people who have real jobs as cleaners, secretaries, junior accountants and branch managers", she writes.
Indeed McIntosh has a point about cleaners. She may also have a point about secretaries and cashiers. I wouldn't know about junior accountants. But it's a fact that each and every branch features a number of footsoldiers (and it's not just the managers) who made it possible for tens of thousands of mortgages and loans to be handed out like sweets in a playground. The rip-off merchants know exactly what they're doing and how to cajole people into their own financial downfall. They pocket commissions each time the muggins customer would add their moniker to a form that would tie him down for decades. And that's without mentioning 'collection departments' and the rest. They have all been absolutely instrumental to the whole system - the one that now politicians and commentators are belatedly branding as 'irresponsible'. It's no wonder most people would rather sympathise with the thousands who are having their homes repossessed and the many victims of 'easy lending' than their perpetrators.
The employees McIntosh is shedding a tear for may have simply been following "company policy", but those are the same people who in the past few years gave you a ring or post a letter dressed up as 'yearly review' that turned out to be yet another loan/credit card offer. Which, to ordinary people on the breadline, would be the equivalent of dangling crack, or whatever drug of choice, in front of Pete Doherty. It was them who were in charge of enticing people into overdrafts, golden accounts and sign-now-pay-later forms, sponging as much cash as possible off the 'customer' and, in Britain, that was done on an industrial scale.
You wilfully get into a job like that? Then don't moan when the old karma strikes back.
[More a critical British perspective on Birmingham's Hagley Road to Ladywood]
