Madam, – I am a public sector worker who has lost 20 per cent of my income since the politically inspired financial crisis began in this country.
Today I received an unsolicited letter from a bank offering me a credit card. The letter declares in bold red capitals: “We can help you get back on track after Christmas”.
They tell me they have, helpfully, set up a website in my name, to further explain how quickly I can “find some room to breathe”, by borrowing money at an interest rate of 15 per cent.
This is the new order in this country: as a result of bank over-lending, our Government needs to borrow billions from the European Central Bank, at a 3 per cent interest rate, to recapitalise these same banks. The banks pay 1-2 per cent above that to the Government. I, and thousands like me, are at the bottom of the pile, forced to contemplate borrowing money at a 15 per cent interest rate, to fill the gap left by having my income cut by 20 per cent, to rescue banks that in turn now want to rescue me from financial peril!
This new Irish “socialism”, where the banks get to make any amount of mistakes, and then become recapitalised by the Government, is insane.
For the banks then to get a shiny new feeding ground to expand their business – the new poor, made poor by their mistakes, and the failure of government to regulate them – is fundamentally immoral.
I have always followed the rules, paid my taxes, and obeyed the law. But it would seem that, in this topsy-turvy world, compliance is the new offending, and offending the new conservatism. It truly is dangerous to be innocent. – Yours, etc,