@Caswell

In an unrelated matter:

Who will head the new branch at the BPWCCUL and will it be a fair choice? It is being said that the committees are made up of friends. Some are asking if these employees are sleeping their way to the top. Some employees are asking.

Sweeping reforms being called for in the UK banking sector. No doubt this is bound to have a rippling effect:

http://news.sky.com/story/957760/miliband-wants-banking-overhaul-after-scandal

Blow the whistle

Speaking of reforms, one reform that’s needed (which you can be sure the banks will fight to the death to prevent) is to take away from commercial banks their ability to make brand new money out of nothing (on which they then get to charge interest) every time they grant a loan.

Imagine if you as an individual were to have only $200 in your bank account and an acquaintance approached you and said, “You can lend me $3000? Courts got a sweet looking, wide screen TV pun sale, and I want to buy one fuh the living room, bad, bad”. You determine this individual is working at a fairly good job paying a reasonable salary and is not already over indebted, so you reply, “Sure, just give me a minute”.

You then run inside to a back room, start up a printing press therein and print of $3000 in $100 bills and take it back to your buddy waiting on the front steps and give him the newly minted (by you) 3000 dollars. You say, “Here is your loan, and by the way, the interest charge will be 15% per annum. The TV will be collateral for the loan, so If you loose your job, have unexpected medical expenses, or for whatever reason don’t make the monthly repayments, you can expect me to come by to collect the TV and you will be legally obligated to give it to me.

Would that be a sweet deal (for you) or what? You just lent the man $3000 dollars that you did not have, until you made it yourself on your own printing press, and lent it out at 15% interest with the loan secured by a widescreen TV which you can keep or resell should a default on the loan occur. Now suppose you can repeat that process and grant more loans in a similar fashion almost ad infinitum as long as you could find applicants needing a loan.

Believe it or not, that’s pretty much the way the banking system operates today. The widespread belief that banks only act as intermediaries, lending the money held by savers in savings accounts, term deposits etc to borrowers needing money to buy physical assets or invest in businesses etc. is a misapprehension. With fractional reserve banking, banks lend out far more money than they have on deposit in savings accounts etc.

In the bank’s case, it doesn’t have to print off physical banknotes to give a client for a loan. It just makes a bookkeeping entry in its database and the newly created money then shows up as a positive balance in the client’s account. The newly created money is taken by the client to purchase, a car, house, living room suite or whatever and then is repaid to the bank at interest. The bank in effect now earns interest on money that, for the most part, did not exist, until the bank itself created the money when the loan was granted”.

97% Owned is a documentary from the UK organisation Positive Money, formed to lobby for monetary reform.

“When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked – questions like: where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance breaks down?

97% Owned is a new documentary that reveals how money is at the root of our current social and economic crisis. Featuring frank interviews and commentary from economists, campaigners and former bankers, it exposes the privatised, debt-based monetary system that gives banks the power to create money, shape the economy, cause crises and push house prices out of reach. Fact-based and clearly explained, in just 60 minutes it shows how the power to create money is the piece of the puzzle that economists were missing when they failed to predict the crisis.”

@Caswell
You are absolutely right about the FSC. It is actually a corruption of co-operative principles to have such a body exercising such responsibility.
Bushie was PERSONALLY disappointed that you did not raise a big stink when these laws were being passed…. (But at that time you were busy advising the AG were you not…?)

The true role of overseeing GOVERNANCE in a cooperative is that of an unpaid group of volunteer MEMBERS, who are elected by the membership and who has the power and right to take action to deal with illegal or even undesirable activities… The Supervisory Committee.

Appointing a body like the FSC simply puts the cooperative into the same situation that CLICO, SAGICOR, BARCLAYS and others find themselves, where weak governance is becominging increasingly endemic.

You always tend to go overboard in seeking to apply the letter of the law, ( a la AX ) but that is a positive for the role of supervisor. 🙂
Public Workers will live to regret not having your brand of “mischief” which is VITAL for an organization of that size and potential for “crookery”.
….every volunteer is not a Bourne….

@Casewell. I would be interested in seeing those articles as well.

Is someone able to say whether Beckles J (ag) has returned to Oistins? Was there someone appointed and functioning to ‘stand in’ at Oistins during the Beckles’ absence?