Why can't a bank have two different interest rates?

Like 0.5% for borrowers/mortgages - 10% (as it used to be when I planned my pension) for savers?

it's called usury

JK2006 wrote:
Why can't a bank have two different interest rates?

Like 0.5% for borrowers/mortgages - 10% (as it used to be when I planned my pension) for savers?

Great idea. I'd go to my bank and borrow £1,000,000 and pay 0.5% interest ( £5,000 pa). I'd then put the money in a savings account and get 10% interest (£100,000 pa). I'd net £95,000 a year for doing nothing. (Which, thinking about it, isn't dissimilar to what the bankers do already!).

Is it because they would be paying out more (10%) to savers (the people they get their money from) than earning in interest (0.5%) from the people that they are lending it too, perhaps ?

They probably DO do this in Greece !

Ah but the trick is - who to allow loans to... I suppose we're back to my age old complaint - why does anyone live on debt? I always bought what I could afford (a small house in 1967 as opposed to the huge mansions other pop stars bought), no drugs or art treasures (don't like either), paid for new sessions with money earned from past sessions (after my dear producers invested in Everyone's Gone To The Moon - my artiste royalties paid for my It's Good News Week session so I earned far more from that and could afford to produce Genesis amongst others)... I have never, in 50 years, had an overdraft. Why would anyone?

JK2006 wrote:
I have never, in 50 years, had an overdraft. Why would anyone?

Overdrafts, like mortgages allow people to own something before they can afford it outright. Best example is a house. If you can’t afford the £200,000+ plus price outright, borrow the money and pay off the loan and interest as quickly as you can. At the end, you own the asset. Better (in most cases) than renting, where you probably pay out the same amount, but you have nothing to show for it at the end. JK, you were fortunate that an early investment you made, (recording “Everyone’s Gone to The Moon”) gave you a fantastic result. Shrewd further investments (and a reasonably modest lifestyle*)have meant you’ve never even need to borrow - even to smooth out troughs and peaks.

*Modest lifestyle included property in London and New York, and frequent Concorde trips between them - but I think you managed to put most of those trips down to business - and other people’s business if I remember rightly!

Indeed - 256 Concorde trips in total Dixie - most either free upgrades from the cheapest economy or paid for by labels, TV companies, managers, publishers or newspapers!

Life is a huge bloody great Monopoly award. Some are fortunate enough to own Mayfair...others struggle around the board, winning the odd beauty contest (which was always very odd whenever I picked up that particular award..god knows what the other contestants were like), and then of course to be told to go to jail, go to directly to jail,...no sense of real justice in that...as in real life.

JK2006 wrote:
Indeed - 256 Concorde trips in total Dixie - most either free upgrades from the cheapest economy or paid for by labels, TV companies, managers, publishers or newspapers!

They mostly gone bankrupt now,or worse,hope it wasn't paying for your tickets

JK2006 wrote:
Ah but the trick is - who to allow loans to... I suppose we're back to my age old complaint - why does anyone live on debt? I always bought what I could afford (a small house in 1967 as opposed to the huge mansions other pop stars bought), no drugs or art treasures (don't like either), paid for new sessions with money earned from past sessions (after my dear producers invested in Everyone's Gone To The Moon - my artiste royalties paid for my It's Good News Week session so I earned far more from that and could afford to produce Genesis amongst others)... I have never, in 50 years, had an overdraft. Why would anyone?

JK..capitalism would never work if people paid their bills and there was no debt.

My father was a merchant banker and even he said the system is completely corrupt (while taking advantage of it).

How on earth would the USA work if there was no debt ?

In The Know- surely you must admire dole scroungers who can't obtain credit and pay for everything in cash (as do Polish Gypsies)

veritas wrote:
JK2006 wrote:
Ah but the trick is - who to allow loans to... I suppose we're back to my age old complaint - why does anyone live on debt? I always bought what I could afford (a small house in 1967 as opposed to the huge mansions other pop stars bought), no drugs or art treasures (don't like either), paid for new sessions with money earned from past sessions (after my dear producers invested in Everyone's Gone To The Moon - my artiste royalties paid for my It's Good News Week session so I earned far more from that and could afford to produce Genesis amongst others)... I have never, in 50 years, had an overdraft. Why would anyone?

JK..capitalism would never work if people paid their bills and there was no debt.

My father was a merchant banker and even he said the system is completely corrupt (while taking advantage of it).

How on earth would the USA work if there was no debt ?

In The Know- surely you must admire dole scroungers who can't obtain credit and pay for everything in cash (as do Polish Gypsies)

Capitalism in its present form has been clearly shown not to work now. It's getting perverse now - the short term sign of relief that the markets have shown and the smiles of joy from all the EU leaders now that they have saddled everyone with even more debt, but realising at the back of their minds that they have effectively had a stay of execution. We have all lived off money that doesn't exist for the last 20 years. This pantomime will happen again in a few months time - the Euro getting even more untenable. Because money now is never seen and is transferred at a touch of a button we don't seem to know the value of it anymore. Someone on the radio was dismissing credit defaults of $2.5billion as 'not very much in the scheme of things'. Covert 1 million into seconds - 2 weeks. 2.5 billion into seconds? - over 60 years! Now we are talking in trillions. Its ridiculous!

veritas wrote:
In The Know- surely you must admire dole scroungers who can't obtain credit and pay for everything in cash (as do Polish Gypsies)

I do Veritas ... I do .... but do the pensioners (who have paid-in all their lives) now that they need an operation and find some scrounger has stolen the money ?

Perhaps you had better watch this programme after all ...
The Future State of Welfare - BBC2 - 9pm - tonight.

In The Know wrote:
veritas wrote:
In The Know- surely you must admire dole scroungers who can't obtain credit and pay for everything in cash (as do Polish Gypsies)

I do Veritas ... I do .... but do the pensioners (who have paid-in all their lives) now that they need an operation and find some scrounger has stolen the money ?

Perhaps you had better watch this programme after all ...
The Future State of Welfare - BBC2 - 9pm - tonight.

this cannot be true. I have seen no story in the Daily Mail saying pensioners are missing out on hip replacements because scroungers stole their money.

I am going to watch it. I think the welfare state is in great danger. Probably mainly because people are living longer and there are too many bloody pensioners queuing up for operations.

Anthony Trollope said people should be forcibly euthanased at 67 and 6 months. It may well happen.