Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Banking’ Category

It looks like the UK government is shaping up to provide yet another unconditional guarantee with an open-ended cost for the taxpayers.

Last time it was Northern Rock for which they have kindly guaranteed that everyone in the UK will pay £1300 to support a bank that should simply have been allowed to fail. This time, it’s potentially even more than that as they appear to be about to guarantee that they will cover any losses incurred by any of the 25 million people who are not potentially at risk to identity fraud thanks to action by the government.

Still, at least they are directly responsible for that this time around.

Wendy’s about to make a start on Mums Finance after finding out that there’s money in tham thar hills, especially if you’re writing a finance related blog.

I imagine that it’ll be a day or two before she gets going in that we don’t even have the software loaded nor the database set up as yet. She’s busy picking out a new template for it at the moment though.

Sometimes I think we’re getting a bit carried away with the blogs but then we look at the money flowing in from them.

I’m reliably informed that the place to go locally to launder some money is a small bank branch in a town just over the border.

Or at least that’s where my informant banks his cash.

The only problem with his choice is that he’s in France and the bank is in Spain. No problem with the currency but what he’s not taken into account is that all European countries have a co-operation agreement in place which means that this bank account will be reported automatically to the French authorities.

I suspect that it will take quite a long time before that attitude of money becoming invisible when you use a bank just over the border changes. It’s been pointless for the Germans to drive over to Luxembourg with a suitcase of cash for quite some time (a very popular pastime apparently).

Anyway, if you’re considering a spot of money laundering, you’ll usually go rather further than just over the border these days.

We are just rubbish at choosing accountants. It’s not that we don’t ask for recommendations because we do.

It’s that the first accountant recommended as “brilliant” to us turned out to be fine when they did the work but they just never got around to it with us.

The second came with an even more glowing recommendation and indeed she was that good. What she didn’t tell us was that she was going to be leaving the firm just a matter of months later and that the firm (apart from her) left quite a bit to be desired.

In fact they were so bad that when she left they never even bothered to open the files on her clients that she, of course, left behind. Net effect of that was that we (ie all such clients I imagine) only found out about her departure when we started getting threatening letters from the tax people saying that they were going to apply all kinds of penalties.

That was in September of last year. They finally completed the 2005 accounts just a few weeks ago (ie two years late) and still haven’t completed the 2006 accounts which is, of course, bringing in more penalty notices and quite laughable demands for money.

There’s something of a growth market in mortgage and loan quotation services at the moment both in America and here in the UK.

That’s indicative of quite a lot of shifting around in the interest rates and deals available so even if you’re not actively considering home loans, it’s a good time to have a quick look. Mortgages are usually by far the largest single expense and therefore even quite a small percentage reduction in the payments can have quite a large effect on your lifestyle. Something as small as 1% of a difference soon adds up: much better to have that money in your pocket than the banks for sure!

Loans are another flavour of the month thing too with Christmas being so close (one month and 10 days to go!). Rather than dump the whole lot on the credit cards, it’s probably better to put some thought into it as it’s easy to save quite a bit with some of the current deals (from 4.9%!).