Dave Yates

In the beginning there was the word and the word was 120% mortgages for people who can’t afford to repay them.

And the bank saw that it was good because they could charge high interest rates. And other banks saw that it was good and they all traded with each other to get a bit of the high interest action.

Then the banks said unto the mortgage holders you may pay off the interest, but must not pay off the forbidden capital. They said this to people like Adam and Eve, who had a 120% mortgage on a semi-detached which they named Eden. The mortgage was at a high rate because Adam was self employed and Eve had a bit of a credit card problem. 

And lo, on the seventh day which came several times every day, the banks paid themselves massive bonuses and drove Ferrari cars to Heaven and other night clubs.

Then one day, having been to the estate agents to think about moving, Adam and Eve were walking in the garden of Eden and thought “our house is worth less than we paid for it”.

“Have an apple”, said Eve to Adam, because it helps to stretch the metaphor further. And he ate of the fruit while he thought about his company which had gone out of business.

They could not pay their mortgage. The banks cast them out from Eden, leaving them only with fig leaves to dress themselves in. The banks repossessed the house but could not sell it for anywhere near enough to cover the outstanding loan. Then the banks found out that this was happening all over the world and what used to pass as a financial system was now going to hell in a Ferrari with a bonus stuffed in its pocket.

And thereafter the people wandered, miserable and broke, while the bankers that emptied Eden don’t have mortgages themselves; they live in comparative paradise with their bonuses having paid off their own, subsidised home loans.