"Ethics, morality etc. only come into it insofar as the banks are required to comply with the law"
So the law is the arbiter of ethics?

You really think that?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 11:09, 1 reply)

Not in the way I conduct myself
but in the way I expect big business to act when I'm dealing with it. I'm playing bank devil's advocate here. The law and professional codes of conduct are the only things there to regulate how banks conduct themselves because at the end of the day no one person is really taking personal responsibility for their actions. A bank doesn't have a conscience. It has the law and subsidiary rules that are laid down for it to abide by to protect the people it is dealing with and, it seems, everyone else. Leaving the philosophical complexities of conscience aside for today, if you don't have one morals and ethics are meaningless. You need the explicit rules and penalties.

If customers need added protection that's where it needs to come from - explicit rules. Yes of course everyone SHOULD act ethically, everyone should act morally. But we realised that particular paradigm for society wasn't working out way back sometime BC - they don't, and they never will, not everyone, not anyone (to varying to degrees) if you ask me, part of the reason being everyone's varying definition of ethical and moral standards and/or willingness to abide by even their own. Hence the law.

Beyond this you rely on the kindness and conscience of individuals, but is the loan manager going to jeapordise his job by going against policy and turning down a loan application from a desperate family who need something to keep the electricity going next month but he knows will ultimately default (a moral dilemma in itself)? Will you and I take the decision to stop investing in banks that have unethical loaning practices by our own standards when that means that we can't have a bank account with anyone (and therefore find life very difficult)?

I could be way out of line here, but that's how I see it today :)

For myself, I like to think that when I choose not to take advantage of someone (were it legal for me to do so) it's because I'm highly empathic and understand the hurt I might cause them if I do so. That's my ethics right there - do unto others... But the making of money is not my raison d'etre.

Bringing it back home, whilst I wouldn't personally loan money to someone I knew would have terrible trouble paying it back, whilst fleecing them of a load more, I still think that anyone who borrows money from a bank does so entirely of their own free will and is entirely responsible for having done so. The suggestion that they weren't is entirely analagous, as someone else said, with the fat person suing McDonalds and is everything that is wrong with the world.
( Throat And Ice Pie I see dem tatties dere., Tue 23 Dec 2008, 13:02, closed)

PS
You're all bastards!! I'm sitting here still not dressed when I was supposed to go to pick up meat about 3 hours ago. Damn your stimulating ways
:P
( Throat And Ice Pie I see dem tatties dere., Tue 23 Dec 2008, 13:37, closed)

It's tricky.
I haven't done any work since February 2007.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 13:39, closed)

*nnnggggh*
- Safari
- Quit safari
( Throat And Ice Pie I see dem tatties dere., Tue 23 Dec 2008, 13:48, closed)