Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
There has been a huge an persistent uproar over the fact that the banks seem to disregard most court decisions against them, as long as they can and even after that.
A recent example: there was a government law that protected small debtors by stating that no residence could be confiscated by the banks that issued the housing loan, if the remaining debt was under 20.000 Euros. But there are many recent cases in which the banks did exactly that: they put the small debtors house on auction. And yes, if the debtor is willing to undertake a huge legal expense he probably will be vindicated in court. But the problem is that a poor debtor can't afford such a legal battle. Over the past few weeks, leftist groups have been showing up in some auctions and breaking them up - nobody calls the police on them.

The same with say, no warnings about transaction fees in ATMs, unlawful penalties for quick repayment of debt and a host of other practices (not to mention a cartel like coordination which is certainly against anti-trust laws, but "surprisingly" the relevant regulators are understaffed and underresourced). The banks' attitude seems to be "we got an army of lawyers - and anyway what are you gonna do about it".

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 08:43:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Others have rated this comment as follows:

Display:

Occasional Series