The Internet changes the way we do business, even the very way we buy our groceries. How we look for our next car, how we insure it and our home.  We live in a home found on the internet, bought with a loan selected from the same source.  We manage our bank accounts on-line and can send instant messages and emails to the other side of the world, or to the person sat next to us, in seconds.  This was a level of empowerment not dreamed of by our parents or grandparents.

All aspects of our life have changed to some degree due to the World Wide Web.  This was fine, we were all moving along nicely getting what we wanted, working for stable companies underpinned as we thought by a stable Banking System that looked after our money.  We did not mind too much that the Banks acted if it was their money and charged us to have access to it.  Our Governments held Banks in high regard and listened to their wise and sage announcements on our county’s economy.  Banks seemed to get caught up in the new world of freedom of action and started to become Sales Organizations.  Never the less unlike other sales lead companies their level of customer service remained low and what the heck they were still arrogant, be what did we expect? They are still Banks after all.  Then America started a fashion of lending money to people who could not afford to pay it back.  When it looked likely that they would get their fingers burned they wrapped up all this dodgy lending in bundles along with better financial deals and sold them around the world like pass the parcel. This enabled greedy bankers  to continue selling loans to people who could not afford them, and extract the higher interest rates demanded,  this in itself is bizarre as usually people who are poor need to pay less.  When critical mass was reached, the sand upon which our Western World banking was built was exposed to the tide of inevitability.

Just about every aspect of our life is in some way changed by the so called Credit Crunch and the ever expanding ripples it has spawned.  Many of the adjustments we are having to make are a bit negative but on the whole we can see and derive positive outcomes from many of these new circumstances.  I think that the biggest positive coming out of the chaos that was our financial institutions, once the envy of the world are now under scrutiny. They are exposed as poorly run economic liabilities.  Now, despite the residual arrogance the Banks still show for their customer base  they must be made to realise that recent events have shown the basis of their world must change. When the tax payer i.e. their very own customer base have been forced to bail them out using our money as taxpayers, in consequence their world cannot return to the way it was before their greed or poor judgement  brought about the calamitous circumstances colloquially known as The Credit Crunch. They do, however seem to be trying to go back to the Status Quo, their only opposition at the moment being confined to petulant posturing from our Government.  They were the people who would will lend our money to our own Government to enable us to run as a country, they would expect interest to be paid on these loans and for them it is good business.  But now we have had to take public ownership of many of the Banks is this still going to be the case and is banking now going to become a more political activity than it was previously? Are fewer of our Tax Pounds to be spent paying interest on loans to our Government?  It will need to be far more accountable and more closely regulated.

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