Bank Director Looking For Work : (The Man Who Spoiled The Economy)

Bank Director Looking For Work : (The Man Who Spoiled The Economy)

The bank did not want him any more. He had been its Director. He had done wonderful things for them. Profits had gone up year on year, while he was at its head, until last year that is. Assets in the balance sheet had to be written down when they found other banks or homeowners were unlikely to repay those debts. American banks had lent to small property owners in large amounts of money, which many of them would be lucky to afford to pay. In some cases losing a job and interrupting employment, even for a short time, or the rise in energy prices, which had recently occurred, was enough to put them in the position of being unable to pay their mortgage payments.

Enough of those people, who should probably not have been allowed such high mortgages, struggled and were unable to continue to pay their mortgages. Their houses were repossessed and the mortgage banks found they were not earning the interest they had been expecting. Profit expectations were not fulfilled and general expectations had to be adjusted! Values of assets had to be slashed!

His own bank had bought debts and borrowed from other banks. Some of them failed and demanded their money back. Many of the debts were found to be worth a fraction of what they had paid for them. His own bank received government support to prevent its failure, but at least it did not fail. Profits had turned to losses unseen before. The shareholders, including the government, demanded his resignation!

At first he thought he could get another job easily. With a CV like his he could not fail; a good degree; an entrepreneurial go getting attitude. He had played plenty of sports at school and university. He had stuck into the banking exams and soon got promoted up the organisation until they made him Managing Director. He had been resourceful. They had sold mortgages in droves. As long as they thought the mortgage borrowers could afford to pay they lent. They didn’t ask too many questions. No one wanted a lender who couldn’t afford to pay, but they did not want to stand in the way of someone getting up onto the property ladder. The bank needed to sell mortgages, and as far as he had been concerned, it was better to sell as many as possible to make as much money as possible.

The boom collapsed eventually. It had been amazing to see the gradual increase in repossessions as the cost of living went up, and then the job market began to wane, and more and more people began to renege on their mortgage agreements.

Anyway he was out now. His CV had done him little good. No other banks would touch him. His tactics had failed, and his own bank had been put at risk. The other banks were not taking on high grade staff anyway. They were all shaking out unnecessary employees rather than taking on, as he had begun to plan to do before he had been forced to resign. He could understand what was happening because he had been there just before, making those same decisions.

He walked along the beach. A pier had virtually closed down. It used to be vibrant, but no one was spending now. Recession had really kicked in now. Parents weren’t letting their kids waste any money now. The rides were dead. They didn’t even bother maintaining any of the machines now. Perhaps one or two were kept in workable order so that if anyone wanted to have a go they might just be able to let them have a ride. There were less attendants now. But few were going up the pier now. No one seemed to be going on holidays anyway.

Some people did go up the pier, couples arm in arm, remembering better times, catching a bit of sea breeze before going back to work, if they were lucky enough to have any work to go to. Brighton seemed to have shut down. Café’s and burger bars had ‘closed’ and ‘for sale’ signs in the windows, or shutters up. There were no more live bands or dance clubs. Arty shops selling crafts, paintings or souvenirs seemed extinct. Not even the rich had spare money for trinkets or the fantasies of the past. ‘Little London by the Sea’, much the same as its mother Greater London, had virtually shut down for business.

Surely there should be winners and losers in the economic game. Even in recessionary times there should be winners, the people who benefited from cheaper prices, cheap labour, the selling at knock down prices of all kinds of properties, plant and machinery and so on. But where were they?

Certainly he did not feel himself to be a winner. He had been on an extremely good salary before. He’d bought quite a few properties himself in the good times; more than he needed for himself and his family. He had put some of the properties to good use, sticking tenants in there at ever increasing market rates, to bring him the returns on investment he had required. He had taken out a few mortgages so he and his wife could benefit from the property price rises. As long as he could afford to pay the mortgages they would make far more money when their properties were finally realised.

Unfortunately when he lost his job he had to let some of the mortgaged properties go, just to pay off the mortgages he could no longer afford to pay. Some he had settled outright and retained the properties. The properties he had had to sell were falling in value already when he tried to sell. The prices had already reached their peak and come back down a bit. Anyway he found that no one was trying to buy so he was having to wait for a sale. The delays meant he didn’t have enough ready cash to pay his continuing mortgage payments. That was the point when he had had the big arguments with his wife. She didn’t see why she should lend him any money to prevent repossessions while they waited for sales of those properties. It was her money, she said, and why should she pay for his financial mistakes, or his greed!

So, in the end, she left him and took the children away from him too. He still got to see them at weekends for a few hours, but that meant trying to keep them entertained, and that was very trying indeed when he was trying not to waste much money.

He finally sold some of his properties, but for a pittance only at this time. He hadn’t made as much money on them as he would or should have made, but at least they enabled him to pay off some of his other mortgages.

He felt lonely now. His beautiful trophy wife who had loved him before, didn’t want him now, and he found he wasn’t quite as eligible now as he had once been. Still he was a fit and perfectly attractive man. He had no doubt he would be able to find a good replacement for Stephanie sooner or later. He was looking, but a lot of women didn’t go out as much as they once did and they were proving harder to find than they once had been.

(hopefully the effects of our recent credit crunch may not be quite so bad as the ones portrayed here, but even that point is debateable)