What am I thinking?

I do not want to talk about bonuses as I believe I understand what has happened. Its simple: if someone makes you ten million pounds in a year I, and most people would be happy to pay them one million. Would you pay them two? Of course, as they still make you eight million. So with high competition from other potential employers how far does this go? Well in reality to 9,999,999 pounds. So the excessive figures have quite simply twisted peoples thinking and fired that ever present sin called greed. It is human.

So whilst we are on the subject of competition let me tell you what I am thinking and where I think we are going. Perfect competition. The sooner we get there the better but the journey will need a rebalancing of power.

Perfect competition is when there are enough producers and consumers that the prices are high enough to give all producers a small profit and to give all consumers reasonable prices. Because of the high level of competition it forces producers to reach maximum efficiency. All prices are the same because there is something called perfect information which is when all parties involved learn all information all at the same time. Twenty years ago this would have seemed like a Utopian concept but with the Internet I would say that we are definitely getting closer. To see a better definition of perfect competition please go to the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition

What we have is lots of consumers not getting the right information from producers/banks and hence not acting together. The banks however, although not openly acting together seem to do everything in a very similar fashion. Maybe this is down to Game Theory but I do not feel that consumers have much power at all in the banking world. Please see this link for an interesting article from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8268599.stm


The concept of banks borrowing money from their customers and paying an interest rate to be able to re use that money seems to have been twisted by the banks: the concept has been lost in the slow creeping mist of slogans and PR. We now have to pay to lend them money. Whether that be through account costs, fines, letters or any other weird way they can think of to take money from our pockets. In reality they should pay us to use our money. All I can say is very good marketing, advertising and propaganda by the banks. However we are at fault too. We believe all this rubbish they tell us and we see on TV. The only way to deal with a group of corporations that seem to be colluding without any evidence of doing so is to form our own groups. Speak with one voice, act together. They need us we are the customer and the customer is King/Queen. It has been done before with great success. Do you remember the Facebook and HSBC situation when some students forced HSBC to change its policy. Do you know it only took less than 6,000 people to threaten action for this to work.


This is a battle we did not start and in some ways we are all guilty of fanning the flames. The Government, bless it, appears to be trying to do something but I am not sure whether their publicity driven actions will have much effect. For us as consumers we are able to do something. Its simple and democratic. We do not want to destroy the banks really but we do have the power to do so. Apart from the occurrence mentioned above I am amazed that this has not been done yet.


If you would like to do something then please send an email to jonesandsmith31@hotmail.com. If enough people send an email then we can move forward. Do not worry I am not a bank. This is just a poll to see if there are enough people who would like to do something. I will not use the emails for anything except to measure interest, unless you state otherwise.