www.iva.co.uk

The biggest fine yet imposed by the FSA for major C card issuer for acknowleging the use of bullying tactics to sell payment protection in 2005 and 2007. If they contested the FSA would have slaped a 1 million quid fine if found gulity!

And whilst EGG are scrutinising IVA proposal to knock down Income and Expenditure allowance,they are soon going to be over 2 million quid short worse off. Now how many bad debts and IVAs could that money cover - thousands I bet.

Along with 'Mandy' demanding the CC industry clean up the interest rates to a resonable level....I think CC companies will be having a bad hair and make up days for a wee bit longer in Xmas.

Many people were driven to IVAs as the CC interest rates went up to about 22% APR....penalising those who are already having problems. You could pay 90% of your monthly payment on just interest and the rest clears the lone in about 50 years....yes MBNA its YOU hO...

Oh, I hear there is a 'Labour Party' creditcard....I am not even going to go there!

I dread to think what the credit limit would be on that - a couple of billion pounds maybe?!?!

And who would be making the repayments on it? Us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even I know the country is suffering from credit overload and I am not a financial type expert at all. Quite clueless when it comes to money, hence being a member of this forum as debtor. So, why are the shops begging people to have store cards? Next, BHS, Dorothy perkins/ burton, all had people on the front of the store, oh, plus homebase last week. Does country need a few more crunchers or something, before its officially crunched out?

I get fed up of being asked if I want one everytime I buy something.

I don't care if I get 10% off my shopping that day!

Don't they look at you funny as well when you turn down this wonderful offer?

Store cards = evil!!! They pushed them at me while I was still a student.....'earning' £6000 a year. And to make the 'saving' worth it, you have to spend loads! Not that I'd qualify for one anyway haha
Hope everyone's doing ok [:)]
xcx

Argos were trying to get me to have one of their credit cards on Monday.

I turned it down.

They weren't a bad company when Prudential part owned them.. Then sh!tt!bank took over.. Nuff said.

The banks and government want us to be in debt. Our economy is a debt based economy. What I mean by that is this: Our GDP (all the money in circulation) is £1.6 Trillion.

Out of that money, less than 1% is minted by the government. The other 99%+ is literally invented out of thin air every time someone takes out a loan, mortgage, uses their credit card etc etc. It isn't borrowed from someone, it isn't sat in account somewhere. It's invented.

In fact banks have the right to invent out of thin air £9 new pounds for every £1 they have in their account. But then as soon as those £9 new pounds have been deposited in an account, they can make £9 more for each of those £9. Actually that's not strictly true, I think the 10% deposit rule was abolished in the 80s, i don't think they have that 10% limit anymore.

Anyway... Now if you take out a loan you have to pay interest on it right, well if all the money in the country has been created out of loans and on all those loans you have to pay interest, where does the money come from to pay the interest... you guessed it, even more loans to pump money into the economy to stimulate growth! They need us to take out loans, 'consumer confidence' that the government harks on about the whole time just means taking out credit.

It's a vicious cycle and won't be resolved until the economists move away from a debt based economy. In fact if the banks called in all of their loans, there would be no money left.

Er.. anyway i'll stop ranting now... i've generalised a bit... but just think it's quite interesting

I agree that we have a debt based economy and it was aggressively pushed by government. The greatest beneficiary was the Treasury because purchases bought on debt incur VAT, inflates company profits which increases the corporation tax take and keeps down unemployment. The banks announce huge profits which leads to more taxes for the government, more money is then loaned out with fewer checks and the circle continues.

However, the whole thing is based on confidence and irrespective of whether there is money in the economy or not, people will not spend when anything is uncertain. I believe a lot of the recession is media driven and the boom was caused by overinflated economic data and ever increasing house prices.

And in reality - UK plc only survives on the back of comsumer spending, so banks will continue to lend in order to keep those wheels turning. Completely agree with Michael about the media influence - I remember well the last recession of the early 1990s, and there was nowhere near the sort of knee jerk reaction that this one seems to be causing.