A month or so back I wrote an article citing facts about just how blatantly crooked (according to their own confessions of guilt) many major US and British banks have become.
How adept they are about actually robbing money out of tax paying citizen’s pockets via many nefarious bid rigging schemes and how insanely risky they are at handling the money people place with them relying on their imp-lied expertise and trust factor. If You didn’t read it, you might care to look it over: One of the Reasons I Recommend You Don’t Use a US Bank While Living in the Philippines
Just yesterday the article below came across my screen, written by a much more learned and deeper researching writer than I. It’s illuminating. and frankly, downright scary:
How the profligate, poorly regulated big banks represent a threat to you and your wealth
We trust big banks. We trust them to look after our money. We trust them to make good investments and bring prosperity to our country. Most importantly, we trust them to do the right thing. Unfortunately these same banks have constantly been in the news over the past few years for all the wrong reasons. In 2009 UBS agreed to pay $780 million after admitting helping with deliberate tax evasion. Only recently Barclays was fined $452 million for attempting to manipulate the Libor and Euribor interbank interest rates – but not to be outdone, HSBC has put Barclays in the shade after being accused by a U.S. Senate committee of operating a money-laundering scheme for drug operations…. (if you have ANY interest at all in the subject of banking safety and where to keep your money safe, Philly recommends you read the full article on How the profligate, poorly regulated big banks represent a threat to you and your wealth (their words, not mine)
I don’t know about you, but the very idea of the treasury Secretary of the US knowing about crooked bid-rigging schemes that hurt each and every one of us by raising our taxes and bankrupting whole communities, even nations, strikes me as absurd, if not (quite possibly) criminal.
Yet we Americans just accept it, while instead people argue about President Obama’s birth certificate or listen, without complaint to a corporate raider, pension killer touring the world and making inane, uniformed war-like statements about other countries, as if he had either the right or the basic knowledge to do so.
Sad to me. Very sad. Where the HELL are you, my fellow Americans? Lost on Facebook?
You write in here and ask questions about Philippine bank’s safety.
What about the ‘banksters” whom you are giving free reign (and government bailout support) to.
Remember my article a couple weeks ago about how many huge, name brand US banks have admitted to doing dirty, crooked mortgage deals for YEARS and paid huge fines (tax deductible?) as simply a cost of doing business… with no other consequence. Recommend reading: One of the Reasons I Recommend You Don’t Use a US Bank While Living in the Philippines
The US government just lets them carry on with their unwise, financially unsound schemes, because there is no reason to regulate or restrain them … if one of their inane financial hand grenades explodes, you and me as people who actually pay US taxes will be the ones who have to fix things.
You heard it here from me and I will keep repeating it. Get your money the hell out of the grip of the banksters. You know, I have actually had people write in and tell me how they wouldn’t trust their money in a Philippine bank and tout, as a “safer” alternative, putting their money in an HSBC account? talk about having a brain divorced from reality. Or maybe getting paid by HSBC to “shill” that corporation to the Internet community interested in banking overseas? After all, making an un-disclosed recommendation for profit would hardly even show up on the radar screen of justice compared with the crimes HSBC has already admitted to.
There are issues with dealing with Philippine banks. I’d be the first one to agree to that statement.
But to see what the huge, name-brand banks in the US are doing makes any name brand bank in the Philippines look safer than the Bank of England.
And one thing for sure, Philippine banks are one hell of a lot less criminal and lie a LOT less than the banks you seem to think are ‘safe”. It’s the out and out lying more than anything else which gets to me. My poor country. When did we become a nation of liars and, worse, bland, an unthinking, uncaring citizenry who accepts those liars and even touts them as people to do business with?
America has become sooo out of tune with the principles of those who founded the country and built it into greatness that I find it hard to believe. Or so Dave opines, YMMV.
Wow! Go get ‘em, Dave!
Yeah got on a roll there, didn’t I? But my goodness the naivete’ of the people who write in and ask (usually loaded) questions about ‘safety’ in the Philippines when they don’t even seem to see the abject criminality on their nightly news just amazes me.
Wasn’t there some Bible verse about a beam in one’s eye? Some of these folks have at least 2×10 in their eye and don’t even notice it.
Ha ha… I can’t disagree. I get similar “loaded” e-mails too, albeit on different subjects, since I don’t really cover banking too much on my site. Keeps me entertained!
Dave, I agree with you on this 100%. Philippine banks are much more conservative and well run than banks in the US and Britain. I am putting my money in BDO.
One thing to keep in mind, Mike. I do NOT advocate putting all one’s money anywhere. Diversification is the key, in my view. I keep- the bulk of my liquid assets in a Credit Union … not a bank …there are important difference … in the USA and keep the bulk of my ‘ready cash’ money in my BDO accounts.
One reason you don’t want _all_ your money in the Philippines is, what if an emergency came up and you had to leave in a hurry. Could you imagine trying to access your BDO account from the USA? Nope, not something I want to do, at least under pressure…