Banks, an Amateur’s View

The chatter about Georgia’s faulty banking system continues nonstop. Banks are described as a pack of crooks, robbers, bandits and greedy usurers. Although it is an indispensable fiscal mechanism for executing numerous financial and economic transactions of various content, a bank’s main job is to sell money.

Here is the ABC of interaction between a borrower of the dough and the owner of that volatile commodity: compelled by some financial exigency, we go to the bank with a request they loan us a certain amount of money for a certain fee for a certain amount of time. Banks usually respond with pleasure to this kind of appeal from a customer and agree based on a certain set of rules. This is the bank’s immediate job and functional responsibility. As a result, a customer either borrows the requested amount or refuses to go for it, all depending on whether the loan conditions are acceptable or not. I have borrowed money from banks in various countries, in most cases in the United States, where life literally stands on bank-and-customer relations. While it is true that the borrowing is much more agreeable than the paying-back, that’s just the way it is: we all borrow with joy and return with regret.

America is a country of people who habitually owe money to one or another financial institution, and no great tragedy is made of it. Yes, people go bankrupt there every so often, but they don’t make a fuss about it, and even if they do, nothing changes: they either pay back what they borrow or they go bankrupt and live with it. That’s the routine! Evictions are commonplace too, based on unpaid debts, and all that’s happening in the strongest country in the world!

Here in Georgia, things are a little different. Here people go to banks, they hear the banking rules and conditions, they might not like them but still go ahead and borrow the money without any confidence that the debt will be paid back.

It is understandable that Georgia is still at its developmental stage of economy and financial culture, but money is money and it has almost the same rules of circulation as elsewhere in the world. The rules are almost the same because the main features of money are the same– it buys and sells or is bought and sold.

I am nobody’s advocate and I also know that some of the rules and banking conditions in Georgia in general might be somewhat cabalistic, but the main thing we should hear well and put up with is that nobody is forcing anybody into any financial transaction, and no deal may be done unless the mutual legal and financial agreement between the bank and the client is achieved and signed. We should not borrow unless we are sure that we can pay back. The entire world knows that banks are not angels, and not only in Georgia. Banks are vultures everywhere and they are building their financial potential on human weaknesses, but we the people also have a tool against the banks, and that’s our brains, telling us not to touch OPM – other people’s money – unless you are convinced that you are capable of bringing it back to the hands from which you borrowed it. best betting site bahsegelegirisap.ycom bet on sports or slot machines This is rule number one. Rule number two is to do without the OPM if this is at all possible, and rule number three – listen to the loan rules and conditions as heedfully as you can, understand them inside-out, weigh them diligently, and then borrow only as much as you can handle. A borrower must remember that if banks are legally right, they will never waive even one cent of the loaned money. This is just their nature, and if they deviate from this sacred rule, they will go bankrupt and may even trigger the collapse of the state.

Finally, if a customer thinks that banks are unlawfully treating them, using certain inequitable ways and means against the wronged clientele, then the financially harmed crowds should go not to the banks to complain, but instead petition the government to change the banking rules on a legislative level. So why waste time with protests and why squander money on painting banners and slogans, no matter how fair and reasonable they may seem to be. I know we borrow money, as we can’t do otherwise, it being in some cases a matter of survival. And still, if you borrow legally, you have to return just as legally. And timely too, for that matter!

By Nugzar B. Ruhadze

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