Unenforceable Credit Agreements

NickX

bert&ernie wrote: »

Hopefully the moderators will take some action that doesn't involve locking or deleting the thread.

Well the bad language has gone now, but I am glad the thread has remained because there is some useful information here and until Proliant lost his cool the debate was reasoned and thoughtful despite the disagreements on the morality of using legal technicalities.

pt2537

After taking a few minutes to think about my last post, i realise that it is always one who messes it up for the many,

i was asked to come over onto this forum to assist those who are in need of help with DCAs, why should those people suffer because of one persons inability to be civil.

I will continue to assist those who need help, let me point out something though,

Using the Consumer Credit Act 1974 to deal with problems is not relying upon technicalities if the agreement is defective ,indeed far from it

The 1974 Act requires that an agreement when presented before a debtor for signing ( Execution) it has all the terms of the agreement in a readily legible form

The Consumer Credit Agreements Regulations 1983 ( SI 1983/1553) prescribed the terms which must be in the agreement for it to comply with the law and to be enforceable before a court. now the lenders know what the law says, its clear and surprisingly unambiguous and for a credit card agreement, it needs to contain the credit limit, the rate of any interest to be applied to the credit and how the debtor may discharge their obligations under the agreement

so whose fault is it, if the lender sends out a mailer application form with none of these terms? it is often the case that the consumers are not legally savvy and would not be aware of the deficiencies within the agreement at the time of signing, indeed how many of you when signing up for HP loans etc stop and say " is this agreementi n the prescribed form, does it contain the prescribed terms etc?" i bet not many do, they are just interested in signing the agreement and getting away from the high pressure salesman in many cases

however the lenders are aware of what is required to be in an agreement and i have no problem in them suffering for their deciept or unfairness

the fact is that the 1974 Act was enacted to protect consumers and ensure transparency in lending. it was enacted after a massive consultation "the Crowther Committee" and it is parliaments will and the courts have no problem upholding this

The law is the law at the end of the day, i may not like it but there is nothing we can do about it

things are going to get a lot fairer for consumers when the Enforcement Restriction Orders become accessible plus there is not the Consumer Protection from Ufair Trading Regulations 2008 and the CCA 2006 has brought in the Unfair Relationships tests which will make DCAs behave a little fairer as if they dont then they are in danger of the courts saying they may not recover any money or having the debts reduced due to the prejudice caused to the debtor by their unfairness and unfair trading practices

Also we have the Fraud Act 2006 which makes pursuing a statute barred debt and knowing its stat barred a criminal offence

but for the moral debate that you are using a technicality to avoid your debts, well i have made my views clear and so have the Courts , the OFT, the Secretary of State and Barristers up and down the country and they all support the view that if the lender fails to follow the law they stand to suffer the consequences

Lastly, my appologies for throwing my dummy out, it is not something i do normally, but i guess we all have an off day

credcrunch

Theres alot of talk on here about the ethics of having one's credit card balance written off and I believe there are merits on both sides of the argument.

The fact is this only applies to credit cards taken out before April 2007 and is a very recent revelation. It also comes as the credit crunch is biting more people harder and harder and even the Chancellor admits things are going to get worse.

The bank of England and the government are happy to continuously bail out "struggling" banks (and a supposedly privatised rail network) so why not help struggling consumers with a government guaranteed loan scheme to refinance debts with interest at the rate of inflation?

As for those who ask ethics questions of the practice of stoozing, consider that a sigificant cause of the credit crunch (and food and energy price increases outstripping peoples' income growth) is down to the rising price of oil. The price of oil is artificially rigged so that all the so called "investors" gambling on the price of a barrel of oil do not lose their money.

Gordon Brown as Chancellor actively encouraged the practice of debt financing. For years vast chunks of the economy have been based purely on the practice of moving money around rather than creating something of value.

pt2537

credcrunch wrote: »

The fact is this only applies to credit cards taken out before April 2007 and is a very recent revelation.

Actually i have to say sorry but you are wrong in this statement

while it is true that the Consumer Credit Act 1974 S127(3-5) has been repealled for agreements entered into from 6th April 07 onwards, S127(1&2) are very much still in operation and are very potent provisions.

secondly there are cases going back to 1998 which the unenforceability of credit agreements have been discussed so its not something that has only recently come to light

but i do agree with the rest of the post thats for sure

Paul_Herring

credcrunch wrote: »

The bank of England and the government are happy to continuously bail out "struggling" banks

You're also wrong on this. Unless you can cite a (non-Daily Mail) reference. The BoE are stopping their buying up of mortgages from banks in October for example. Who have they continuously bailed out?

As for those who ask ethics questions of the practice of stoozing, consider that a sigificant cause of the credit crunch (and food and energy price increases outstripping peoples' income growth) is down to the rising price of oil. The price of oil is artificially rigged so that all the so called "investors" gambling on the price of a barrel of oil do not lose their money.

Cite?

Gordon Brown as Chancellor actively encouraged the practice of debt financing.

Cite?

For years vast chunks of the economy have been based purely on the practice of moving money around rather than creating something of value.

(I'm feeling like a Mod on Wonkypedia here...) Cite?

waycam

Paul Where can we find the information to either sort out the wipe of off credit due to the ressons discussed or find a local solicitor to help as you have for your customers. Im looking at a credit card going for a charging order over my house and desperately need to resolve this as they are refusing my offers of payment until i can increase them once my business increases its cashflow.

Paul_Herring

They charge you around £400 for them to see if your case can be won and you do not get the money back.

Did you miss the bit about them also requiring a percentage of any successfully cancelled amounts?

edwinac_2

credcrunch wrote: »

The price of oil is artificially rigged so that all the so called "investors" gambling on the price of a barrel of oil do not lose their money.

Executive Intelligence Review offers some good insight on London's International Petroleum Exchange, where speculation is crippling the world economy...

Rigged Market

Some fools will insist on buying the Brooklyn Bridge, no matter how many times you tell them it's already been sold. The same is true with the story that there is an oil shortage. The truth: No oil shortage exists. Figures from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the central collection point for world oil information, show that for the first quarter of 2004, world oil supplies were in the range of 82.3 million barrels a day (mbd), with consumption lower, in the range of 80.5 mbd to as high as 81.5 mbd. Thus, the world was in surplus during the first 90 days of the year, during the very period that world oil prices leapt by $7 per barrel.

Furthermore, there is no relationship between the price of oil and the amount of oil being produced. Over the past several decades, oil production has increased slowly and predictably. Figure 1shows that, since 1992, production has grown by approximately 15% Though not shown, world oil consumption has also grown gradually and predictably. Only if production had dropped significantly, or consumption risen steeply, should the world oil price have jumped up. Neither of these two changes has happened.

How, then, should one explain the activity of the past dozen years, in which the oil price swung wildly up and down, regardless of rising production levels? Figure 1 shows the price gyrated wildly, first downward, then upward, then down again, and then up; today, the oil price is more than 50% above its 1992 level.

The key to the ability of the financiers behind the oil cartel to manipulate prices in the oil market, is the shift which occurred during the oil crises of 1974 and 1979, in which long-term contracts—frequently for 24 or 36 months—at stable prices were replaced with the spot market and then the futures markets.

Spot and Futures Markets

The oil spot market was created in 1969 by the Lazard/Rothschild-allied Philipp Brothers, then the world's largest metals trader. Philipp Brothers, largely in the person of their top trader Marc Rich, began by selling small quantities of Iranian crude oil to independent refiners.

The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, which were orchestrated by the financier oligarchy under the cover of the OPEC oil embargo and the fall of the Shah in Iran, resulted in a shift in oil pricing away from long-term contracts toward the Rotterdam-based spot market.

By "spot" is meant, that one buys the oil at a market only 24-48 hours before one takes physical (spot) delivery, as opposed to buying it 12 or more months in advance. In effect, the spot market inserted a financial middleman into the oilpatch income stream in much the same way that deregulation would later do for electricity.

Today, the oil price is largely set in the futures markets. The two principal locales which dominate oil futures trading are the London-based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), established in 1980, and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), which is more than a century old, but also first started trading oil futures in 1983. Traders call futures contracts "paper oil": the contracts are a paper claim against oil, which is far in excess of the volume of oil produced and actually delivered at oil terminals on behalf of those contracts.

The traders transact a large volume of derivatives bets. Speculators purchase on the IPE and NYMEX exchanges, futures contracts; each single contract is a bet on 1,000 barrels of oil. More than 100 million of these oil derivatives contracts were traded on these exchanges in 2003, representing 100 billion barrels of oil. In a year 2000 study, EIR showed that on the IPE, for every 570 "paper barrels of oil"—that is futures derivatives covering 570 barrels—traded each year, there was only one underlying physical barrel of oil. The 570 paper oil contracts pull the price of the underlying barrel of oil, manipulating the oil price. If the speculators bet long—that the price will rise—the mountain of bets pulls up the underlying price.

But worse, there is a second layer of leverage. At the London IPE, the speculator can buy a futures contract on a margin of 3.8%. That is, were the speculator to buy a single futures contract, representing 1,000 barrels of oil at, say, an oil price of $40 per barrel, then the contract represents $40,000. However, the speculator pays only $1,520 for the premium of the contract—or 3.8% of the $40,000—which gives him control over the contract. Through an investment of $1,520, the speculator controls 1,000 barrels of oil. A small group of speculators, through leverage, control the world oil price.

A NYMEX document, "How the Exchange Works," boasts that it has nothing to do with oil production. "Yet the buying and selling on the Exchange occurs amid the winding streets of the oldest section of New York, with nary an oil well or copper mine in sight. In fact, many thousands of transactions conducted on the Exchange each day are accomplished without the participants ever seeing a gallon of heating oil."

As for London's (IPE), it has reported that its trade with Brent Crude oil contracts reached 375 million barrels in open-interest contracts on May 14, the highest level ever. This is about five times the total daily production of all sorts of oil worldwide. The daily turnover of Brent Crude future contracts at the IPE now approximates twice the global daily production of oil. But physical deliveries of Brent Crude, produced in 19 North Sea oil fields, are imploding. During the early 1990s, daily production of Brent Crude was about 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), but it fell to 570,000 bpd in 1999; 385,000 bpd in 2002, 327,000 bpd in 2003. According to the energy research firm Platts, it will sink further to 277,000 bpd this year. The outstanding amount of speculative Brent Crude futures on May 14 surpassed the daily physical production by a factor of 1,250.

In spite of the fact that Brent Crude now represents less than 0.4% of worldwide production, its "spot" price determines the price of 60% of global oil production.

Cartel Instruments: IPE and NYMEX

But the IPE and the NYMEX, where nary a barrel of oil is to be seen, are the in-house tools of the House of Windsor Raw Materials Cartel, and its allies in the banking world.

Consider the IPE, which was created in 1980. Today, the IPE is run by a Knight of the British Empire and former Royal Dutch/Shell official, Sir Robert Reid, and has a board which includes Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, representatives of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas, Credit Lyonnais, and French oil giant Total.

In 2001, the Atlanta, Georgia-based Intercontinental Exchange purchased the IPE. The Intercontinental Exchange's board includes the retired CEO of Royal Dutch/Shell's trading arm Coral Energy, the Chicago Board of Trade's Richard Sandor (himself a former banker with Banque Indosuez and Drexel Burnham Lambert), and one Jean-Marc Forneri, a banker who from 1994-96, was a partner at Demachy Worms & Cie., where he ran the investment-banking activities of Group Worms. World War II U.S. Intelligence services identified Banque Worms as the central powerhouse of the Synarchist fascist movement in Vichy, France.

The biggest oil derivatives traders which run trading on the IPE include Barclays Capital, Bear Stearns International, J.P. Morgan Securities, Deutsche Futures London, BP Oil International, Shell International Trading and so forth—the key components of the British oligarchy's world oil cartel....

In full at Executive Intelligence Review (June 11, 2004)

edwinac_2

Paul_Herring wrote: »

You're also wrong on this. Unless you can cite a (non-Daily Mail) reference. The BoE are stopping their buying up of mortgages from banks in October for example.

No! I fancy it is you, Paul, who should offer some proof with your claims!

According to reports in the Financial Times, you are completely wrong on both counts.

The BoE's hyperinflationary liquidity scheme was extended on Sep 17.

Today, the FT reports that the first "helicopter drop" of new money, £40bn initially, will take place on Monday.

Another "injection of liquidity" is expected the following week. Banks will continue to use this "special facility" to swap their dodgy mortgages and "other asset-backed securities" for Government bonds.

As the financier oligarchy tries in vain to keep their sinking ship afloat, pretty much anything is accepted as collateral by the Old Wh0re of Threadneedle Street.

ft.com wrote:

.
London acts to unfreeze markets
By Chris Giles and Norma Cohen
Financial Times (London)

Published: September 27 2008 03:00 | Last updated: September 27 2008 03:00

The Bank of England took decisive action yesterday with the aim of unfreezing wholesale money markets. It announced it would lend £40bn to banks until mid- January and was willing to accept a wider than usual range of collateral...

"Make no mistake, this a substantial slug of liquidity," said Philip Shaw of Investec. "It is also of a reasonably long duration, which will allow banks to build assets against it, or looking from a gloomy perspective, will prevent banks having to unwind their assets."..

The Bank will accept triple A rated UK and European mortgage-backed securities alongside government bonds and other asset-backed securities in the operations. It will enable British banks temporarily to offload even more illiquid mortgage- backed securities to the Bank at a rate that is unlikely to be penal.

See: London acts to unfreeze markets

ft.com wrote:

.
BoE extends special liquidity scheme
By Chris Giles, Econonics Editor
Financial Times (London)

Published: September 17 2008 16:10 | Last updated: September 17 2008 16:10

[T]he Bank of England announced it was extending its liquidity operation, giving more time for banks to swap mortgages for government bonds....

It represents another U-turn by Mervyn King, the Bank governor, who told Parliament as recently as last week that banks had been given ample time to access the scheme since its launch in April and there was no question of giving them more time..

See: BoE extends special liquidity scheme

Paul_Herring

edwinac wrote: »

No! I fancy it is you, Paul, who should offer some proof with your claims!

According to reports in the Financial Times, you are completely wrong on both counts.

The BoE's hyperinflationary liquidity scheme was extended on Sep 17.

You quote a post I made on the 14th of Sep to tell me I'm wrong because of a judgement/decision made on the 17th of Sep?

Grow up.