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Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

theguardian.com

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Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#101

Post by [deleted] »

StudyAnimal wrote: post #97
elcapitan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different countries, different markets, right? Most Germans don't have a CC (if so, then often only for vacation). Inside Germany, the preferred payment version is direct debit. For ecommerce usually paypal as well. Everybody has an EC card (=debit card) issued by their bank and uses that for paying without cash in shops. Even with a CC you wouldn't be able to pay in many of them.

I don't know many Germans that do not have a credit card these days. You are right that the EC card gets used day-to-day (but maybe less than cash) but most Germans have a credit card for online shopping.

[deleted]

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#102

Post by et2o »

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…

Won't someone think of the banks!?

Your comment is farcical; it's been widely written about how lightly banks and other financial institutions get off following egregious violations of law.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#103

Post by morsch »

StudyAnimal wrote: post #97
elcapitan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different countries, different markets, right? Most Germans don't have a CC (if so, then often only for vacation). Inside Germany, the preferred payment version is direct debit. For ecommerce usually paypal as well. Everybody has an EC card (=debit card) issued by their bank and uses that for paying without cash in shops. Even with a CC you wouldn't be able to pay in many of them.

I don't know many Germans that do not have a credit card these days. You are right that the EC card gets used day-to-day (but maybe less than cash) but most Germans have a credit card for online shopping.

About a third of Germans have a credit card. As a comparison, it's 75% in the US.

http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/konjunktur/nachrichten/z...

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/FinancialSecurity/story?id=129664

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#104

Post by SyneRyder »

kecks wrote: post #81
dualogy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Well whoever can hack your password, mobile TAN or TAN reader device will likely still not hack into your paper TAN list. There's something to be said for a "physical layer".

VISA debit isn't available in NL either. I get the impressions very few countries actually give out these cards.

In Australia, pretty much every bank account will include a free Visa / Mastercard debit card, built-in to your ATM card. You can also buy them in supermarkets as reloadable gift cards, or post offices as international travel cards. Though they typically won't work in Germany, since most German stores only accept EC Cards and not Visa / Mastercard.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#105

Post by whyever »

Udo wrote: post #84
simi_ wrote: post #64

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…

I'm a (german) DB customer as well, and I can't say I share a lot of these experiences. > Buggy app and web interface, sometimes the login fails or hangs randomly This never happened to me, maybe I'm just lucky. There used to be a problem with the web interface when you entered the banking system's URL without " https://" but that's not really the same. > The way to authorise online transactions is with a piece of pa…

Actually the TAN list is probably more secure than SMS TAN and push TAN, which have been hacked in the past.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#106

Post by taejo »

simi_ wrote: post #64

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…

> * I can't remember if this was the case in UK, but I noticed that transfers to some Western EU countries

This is the law for all Euro-denominated transfers in the EU (even in the UK -- but unless your account is Euro-denominated they can still make money off the forex).

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#107

Post by StavrosK »

wobbleblob wrote: post #78
StavrosK wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, I mean, apart from his offensive last line, he has a point. I'm Greek and I wouldn't wish bank failure on anyone, German or not.

The Germans will be ok, don't worry about them, but maybe they'll change their mind about collective guilt now. I never saw the EU bailouts as handouts from the virtuous to the losers, nor do I see it as an altruistic gift to our friends in need. I see it more as an insurance. Do people whose house isn't on fire want to punish those whose house burned down? No. We all know it could happen to us. I don't think Germany…

Oh, definitely, but it's still not something to wish on someone. Then again, I guess the colleague was just laughing at the irony, so we aren't all arguing the same point here.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#108

Post by mercurial »

chvid wrote: post #79
creshal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How much of that stretch is real, and how much is fear-mongering to influence upcoming elections? Do you have hard numbers?

The numbers exists - at least for Denmark. I think the stretch is real. Elections are not due any time soon.

No, but your friendly DF representatives think about this stuff all the time, they don't need election pressure for that.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#109

Post by cturner »

cm2187 wrote: post #88
cturner wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they cannot escape US regulation and legal exposure as > long as they want to have the ability to trade US dollars You don't need to be in the US to trade USD. FX is more lightly regulated than almost all other asset classes. For most of the cold war there was a strong trade in USD based out of London-based banks that had no US presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar

But you still need a bank that can clear USD payments to trade FX.

Doesn't need to be a bank. You go to a shopfront FX dealer in Vientiane or Tehran or St Petersburg and deposit or withdraw USD against local currency (or anything else that's liquid).

In the most basic trades, possession is settlement. Much of the third world has significant trade in USD, including countries that the US doesn't regard well. In Panama, the USD is a defacto national currency, a choice the crowd has arrived at due to convenience.

You can get an armoured van and deliver packs of physical notes.

You can use contracts to get more complicated arrangements, including where you have USD on paper but backed by an alternative currency. You can do balance sheet adjustments by contract. You can be a dutch firm ordering agricultural goods from Kenya, and do your leg of the transaction by delivering USD. The banks in the middle might exchange physical USD to make it happen, without any of them being regulated by the US at the time. But - probably - they'll just organise the deal in terms of USD using holdings of other currencies or commodities or contract-agreed offsets that are convenient to them.

Re: Deutsche Bank: Germany's Financial Colossus Stumbles

#110

Post by cm2187 »

cturner wrote: post #109
cm2187 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you still need a bank that can clear USD payments to trade FX.

Doesn't need to be a bank. You go to a shopfront FX dealer in Vientiane or Tehran or St Petersburg and deposit or withdraw USD against local currency (or anything else that's liquid). In the most basic trades, possession is settlement. Much of the third world has significant trade in USD, including countries that the US doesn't regard well. In Panama, the USD is a defacto national currency, a choice the crowd has arr…

If you do a transaction with physical cash, yes you don't need a bank. But if you do any large transaction it will not be in physical cash, and the clearing has to go through a US approved bank. Foreign banks that cannot clear USD use other banks behind the scene.
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