Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 112 posts

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#61

Post by pofjer »

Oletros wrote: post #55
Sidon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your colleague from Greece should realize that when DB 'falls' tons of people will take the fall for it, regular people like you and me, people who are just trying to make a living, like all those poor fucks in Greece. The group of people taking the fall for it won't be limited to Germany, you can be sure Greeks will feel it as well. Tell him to just stfu and get back to work.

The only difference is that right now the bank is German. When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the German government didn't give a fuck about the people. Don't tell us about regular people, we have suffered it since years ago and Merkel just said STFU and fuck off And don't talking about the moral lessons they gave us. But ohh, the German banks are exactly the same as the other ones

Small correction: "When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish governments didn't give a fuck about the people."

Since you appear to be from one of those countries, you should see how to get more responsible for your choices and look for better representatives to elect. I don't see what's your point about another sovereign country. Everyone has their own problems, let's just focus on ours.

BTW you would be surprised how pissed off were Germans at that time, because every sane person knows the old saying: "Bankers here, bankers there, all the same everywhere." So we (at least not the bigots among us) should be allowed to speak of regular people bearing the cost of such changes, shall they happen, just as we (and YOU) did it when the same thing happened in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#62

Post by _pmf_ »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #8
Hermel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why there isn't more resistance against the exorbitant fines the US charges European banks every year. These fines have become a significant business risk and should be regulated in free trade agreements, just like subsidies are limited in such agreements. For many European banks, the US business is a money drain, i.e. it costs them more than they get from it. However, they cannot escape US regulation and le…

US Regulators fine all banks in the US that they catch flagrantly breaking the law. They don't just fine European banks - have a look at how much they have fined the likes of JPMorgan or BoA over the last few years. Likewise, regulators in Europe dish out fines a-plenty. The FSA certainly did over the LIBOR scandal recently. European banks could mitigate risk in the US by trading legally or by ceasing trading there a…

> have a look at how much they have fined the likes of JPMorgan or BoA over the last few years.

Pocket money they pay out of their bailout spoils.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#63

Post by [deleted] »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #53
Sidon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your colleague from Greece should realize that when DB 'falls' tons of people will take the fall for it, regular people like you and me, people who are just trying to make a living, like all those poor fucks in Greece. The group of people taking the fall for it won't be limited to Germany, you can be sure Greeks will feel it as well. Tell him to just stfu and get back to work.

Yeah, tell that dirty lazy Greek to get back to work. They deserve every bit of what happened to them and the debt won't pay by itself. Such a banking fiasco would never happen in a country filled with precise, punctual, hard-working and responsible light beings such as Germany.

[deleted]

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#64

Post by simi_ »

Moving from the UK to Germany, I chose Deutsche Bank based on its reputation.

Pros:

* English! There is always someone on the phone who can speak English, and they can even send their letters in English. (for Germany, this is very rare)

* More "high touch" - there is a person assigned to your account

* I can't remember if this was the case in UK, but I noticed that transfers to some Western EU countries have no fees and happen almost instantly. Yay!

Cons:

* Buggy app and web interface, sometimes the login fails or hangs randomly (revenue was €31.95 billion in 2014, it's understandable that they can't afford spending too much on this)

* The way to authorise online transactions is with a piece of paper with 100 codes printed on it (TAN list). This was a shock, but it's apparently common here.

* Taking advantage of new customers. They offered me a loan which I later realised had a ridiculous interest rate. (I guess this isn't exclusive to DB, but silly me expected that a good, more prestigious bank would value longer term customer relationships)

* Stupid useless cards. The default account (€5/month) comes with a card (EC Karte) that can only be used at German ATMs and in most German stores. Good luck trying to do anything online with it. For that you need a credit card (extra €5/month), the very idea of something like VISA Debit seems completely alien to Germans.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#65

Post by pizza234 »

zmb_ wrote: post #45
JetSetWilly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Regulators fine all banks in the US that they catch flagrantly breaking the law. They don't just fine European banks - have a look at how much they have fined the likes of JPMorgan or BoA over the last few years. Likewise, regulators in Europe dish out fines a-plenty. The FSA certainly did over the LIBOR scandal recently. European banks could mitigate risk in the US by trading legally or by ceasing trading there a…

It's not the regulators, it's the prosecutors in New York, who have jurisdiction over the European banks since USD transactions are cleared there. The problem is that banks absolutely cannot afford to risk going to court, since losing a case could mean losing their ability to deal in USD, which would be the end for them. That means that the banks must settle any case brought by the prosecutors. The prosecutors in New…

With "protecting" you mean for example protecting the money laundering business in Mexico?

Your perspective is too generalized, thus ultimately false. The case depends on the size of the bank.

In the case of a famous British bank, the prosecution literally stated that they could not prosecute the bank because it would have been too much of a big impact on the economy.

They got fined with the equivalent of a few weeks of profit, and who knows how much they ever profited from such illegal activities.

Doesn't sound a protection racket to me.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#66

Post by pofjer »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #47
wobbleblob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. For the past 8 years, day in day out you have to hear jokes about how dishonest and unreliable Greeks are, that they caused these problems for us with their cheating, how they should be strictly honest and reliable like Germans, how they shouldn't spend money they don't have and get their finances in order like Germans, and then the Volkswagen scandal happened, and now this.…

The anti-Greek propaganda in German mainstream media was disgusting.

... and all sane people in Germany condemned them for that.

BTW nobody spoke on the issues of other EU members, like e.g. Greece's northern neighbours Bulgaria and Romania where people live with less than the Greeks during the worst times of their crisis. And all this just because someone somewhere gave carte blanche to the Soviet Union to install pro-communist forces in countries of strategic interest to them where there was almost non-existant communist movement compared to Greece where the UK allegedly intervened so that this won't happen. Just for perspective: people lived comparably good/bad in all three countries before WW2.

As a German, you should know how economically devastated was the DDR after 1989. And bear in mind that it was the best player in the Eastern league of non-representativeness and corruption. (comparisons with the West are another topic altogether)

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#67

Post by chvid »

morsch wrote: post #54
chvid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry; what I wrote was not correct. What I meant was: The influx of refugees will strech the public finances. How much and whether "welcoming refugees eventually will turn out to be a good investment" is deeply controversial and so politicized that it is very hard to have a reasonable conversation about it. However I think it is fair to say that taking in refugees costs money in the short term.

Merkel buying new shoe laces costs money in the short term. You have just repeated your claims from the original post without clearing up what you mean by stretching public finances and documenting it with numbers. Everybody else is basically saying that the refugees aren't expensive enough to warrant this language on the balance sheet of one of the richer economies in the world.

I really was biting my tongue to write this as dry and neutral as possible.

I am from Denmark and in many ways we are similar to Germany.

But we are different in that we have taken in a relatively small number of refugees (around 25.000 pa. excl. family reunions, population 6 mio.) and yet the subject number 1 in Danish politics is how to handle the strech on public finances it creates.

This may be due to two things:

1. Denmark is more generous to refugees and/or integrates them more poorly.

2. Denmark has different politics where it is okay to talk refugees as expenses. (Whether they are or not is another question - my point is that our politicians talk about it in this way.)

What I wrote would absolutely not be controversial to say in Denmark but I can see from the downvotes that it is different elsewhere.

Which I think underlines my point that this subject really is too touchy to have a good conversation about.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#68

Post by Oletros »

pofjer wrote: post #61
Oletros wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that right now the bank is German. When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the German government didn't give a fuck about the people. Don't tell us about regular people, we have suffered it since years ago and Merkel just said STFU and fuck off And don't talking about the moral lessons they gave us. But ohh, the German banks are exactly the same as the other ones

Small correction: "When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish governments didn't give a fuck about the people." Since you appear to be from one of those countries, you should see how to get more responsible for your choices and look for better representatives to elect. I don't see what's your point about another sovereign country. Everyone has their own problems,…

No, your correction is a lie. The ones that didn't give a fuck, didn't want to help and made the crisis worst were the German government and their negative to help because the South countries were just a bunch of people that didn't work, expend too much and deserved all that happen.

>? Since you appear to be from one of those countries, you should see how to get more responsible for your choices and look for better representatives to elect. I don't see what's your point about another sovereign country. Everyone has their own problems, let's just focus on ours.

This must be a fucking joke looking what happened to Greece. When the people elected different government, the German one did what they did.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#69

Post by cmdkeen »

Findeton wrote: post #9
testerooooooo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that will solve it. Just like the eurozone money solved all the problems 15 years ago.

Precisely part of the problem was to give everyone the same currency but make every country fight each other for debt.

More precisely everyone got the same currency but didn't have to actually live by the stability pact. The politics of Euro membership were more important than the reality. Greece should never have been allowed to join, France and German routinely ignored the Stability and Growth pact.

The problem with DB is that Germany cannot let it fail because it underwrites its export economy, plus it would be a national humiliation. However bailing it out after imposing austerity on the PIGS, especially Greece would pour fuel on the fire of anti-German sentiment in the EU.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#70

Post by patrickk »

Oletros wrote: post #55
Sidon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your colleague from Greece should realize that when DB 'falls' tons of people will take the fall for it, regular people like you and me, people who are just trying to make a living, like all those poor fucks in Greece. The group of people taking the fall for it won't be limited to Germany, you can be sure Greeks will feel it as well. Tell him to just stfu and get back to work.

The only difference is that right now the bank is German. When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the German government didn't give a fuck about the people. Don't tell us about regular people, we have suffered it since years ago and Merkel just said STFU and fuck off And don't talking about the moral lessons they gave us. But ohh, the German banks are exactly the same as the other ones

The reason the Spanish and Irish bailouts happened in fact was to protect the "contagion" spreading to the banks of the "core" countries.

Why? Because German and French banks lent huge sums to periphery countries - which is why the bailouts were forced on them.

What you are seeing now is the chickens coming home to roost.

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2012/05/10/financial-contagion...

Post reply on HN