Bank Underground, the blog written by Bank of England staff

https://bankunderground.co.uk/about-3/

by Erikun • 10 years ago

166 66 10 years ago

bankunderground.co.uk

tombrossman2• 10 years ago

Bank of England blog: HTTPS only

Bank of England primary website: HTTP only

They get bonus points for their Let's Encrypt cert and a solid 'A' on SSL Labs (some amusing alt names on the cert though - not their fault and no big deal).

Maybe someone at the bank will realize soon that HTTPS is for more than protecting log-ins, it guarantees the integrity of the page and makes sure the browser displays only and exactly what was sent, with no tampering in transit.

corin_2• 10 years ago

They just chose to have a hosted blog from Wordpress with a custom domain, Wordpress chose to use a Let's Encrypt certificate and to lump a bunch of different customers' custom domains into one certificate request hence the alt names.

oarsinsync2• 10 years ago

Lots of sites using the same private key. Could this be potentially problematic?

beejiu• 10 years ago

This was also the case with GCHQ's website until recently.

biggio• 10 years ago

Browser not supported :D

https://www.boe-careers.co.uk/OA_HTML/RF.jsp?function_id=142....

coderdude• 10 years ago

This looks promising and different. I like that they say up front that some staff opinions will align with the views of the organization and some will not. I'm sure someone will come up with something shallow to complain about but this is actually cool.

branchless3• 10 years ago

BoE are very old establishment. I think taking text on a BoE blog that it will be free speech is not realistic. Like the BBC they will be with you right until it matters. Then you are on one side of the fence and the establishment are on the other with the BBC/BoE next to them, grinning.

kinai2• 10 years ago

"Our goal is to bring more of our thinking into the public domain..."

Like any other bank: Rob the small people, give to the rich, make the government your bitch

spicerguy9• 10 years ago

I would suggest you find out a little bit more about the BoE. It's not an investment or retail bank, it's a central bank which is more about influencing economic policy and other banking policy than pushing money around. Interestingly the UK government decoupled the bank from direct control in 1998, which greatly reduced the risk of wild interest rate fluctuations driven by political motivations, which had caused a lot of pain in the previous decades.

oarsinsync2• 10 years ago

Note that it's a group of private bankers dictating monetary policy for the country.

cbeach2• 10 years ago

Yikes! Do you know of a bank that has robbed from the small people? I work in finance and there's tremendous protection for the small people in everything we do. Their deposits are covered by government guarantees, whereas the richer clients are left more exposed.

But if you have an instance where banks have stolen from small people I would love to hear more about it, and I'm sure it will make front page news around the world.

eru5• 10 years ago

British banks (not the BoE) are shafting their poorer customers with lots of fees. They regularly get dinged for it by their regulator.

(Can't complain about eg German banks too much in that regard. But the British banks are really the scum of the earth as far as `not being evil' to poorer customers is concerned..)

spicerguy9• 10 years ago

this is certainly currently the case for the UK, with protection of deposits up to £75k for private account holders (http://www.fscs.org.uk/what-we-cover/products/banks-building...), though I'm sure we could find plenty of antecedents if we cast the net widely enough geographically and historically.

exo762• 10 years ago

Their deposits are covered by government guarantees, whereas the richer clients are left more exposed.

This is not a case of greater protection for "small people".

a) event that may trigger this protection is very rare

b) "small people" are getting shafted with excessive fees all the time

So no, you don't.

How about keeping agreements between bank and client clear and short? Richer clients don't get caught on those, poorer do.

kinai2• 10 years ago

Seems 2008 didn't happen in your reality. The small people have to suffer because if what the banking industry did. Always been that way. How brainwashed you must be to defend this whole industry which has more blood on its hand than any other. Greed seems to get even the smartest people...

Not to mention how banks now push European Countries to get rid of cash so they can earn more by bank accounts/transfer fees.

peteretep3• 10 years ago

    > Do you know of a bank that has robbed from the small
    > people? I work in finance

There was that whole subprime crisis thing.

Now you could split hairs here, and say that rather than technically robbing their clients, the banks involved merely cheated them, but as you follow with:

    > there's tremendous protection for the small people
    > in everything we do

I'm guessing you're not going to do that.

Matt Taibbi sums it up nicely, so rather than paraphrase him, I'll just quote him:

    > > about two-thirds of all subprime loans between
    > > 2000 and 2007 were made to people who already
    > > owned their homes. The targets were often
    > > elderly, in particular men and women of color.
    > > Visiting loan officers convinced these borrowers
    > > to use the homes they'd poured their savings into
    > > their whole lives as ATM machines.

    > > The pitch was: refinance your home, and get a
    > > little extra spending money each month! Lots of
    > > people went for it. But there was mischief hidden
    > > in the fine print of many of these "refi" deals,
    > > which often quickly exploded. Before long, the
    > > now-departed agent's promises would evaporate into
    > > a toxic quicksand of debt, unforeseen penalties
    > > and foreclosure.

As the same article goes to point on, Wells Fargo paid a $175,000,000 settlement for this shit. From the Baltimore Sun[1]:

    > > "80-year-old African-American resident of the
    > > Baltimore area with a 714 credit score and a
    > > rock-solid credit file who received a subprime
    > > loan instead of a prime loan, and who was not told 
    > > that she may have qualified for a prime loan with
    > > better terms."
    > > "By the time she realized she had an
    > > adjustable-rate mortgage, and not the fixed rate
    > > she thought, it was too late,"

Does it get worse? Of course it gets worse, we're talking about a bank! Not content with merely going after vulnerable people with predatory lending practices, they made to sure to refer to the POC they lent to as "mud people"[2]

Tell me again about those protections for the small people? They sound great.

[0] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-line-that-may-...

[1] http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-07-12/news/bs-md-ci-we...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/07baltimore.html

jsprogrammer4• 10 years ago

Do you not follow industry news?

Banks moved LIBOR at will (sometimes for sushi), affecting all customers of banks.

josephlord• 10 years ago

There is the PPI (payment protection insurance) scandal in the UK. Billions has been paid out in compensation and it has been front page news.

spicerguy9• 10 years ago

completely irrelevant point of clarification: bank underground refers to the London Underground (metro station) stop immediately in front of the bank, rather than some sort of anarchist agenda (but given UK civil servants general ambivalence towards authority there may be a slightly sly nod to the alternative reading of this).

jessriedel• 10 years ago

Couldnt it be a double entendre? "Weather undrground" isnt anarchist, but it is a tongue in cheek way to express that its not mainstream.

colah3• 10 years ago

Although, there was at one point an anarchist organization called the weather underground: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground I understand they had a "brick reallocation committee" that reallocated bricks through windows.

As objectionable as such behavior might be, I find the understated names pretty amusing.

user_rob• 10 years ago

This is a really good resource for anyone interested in economics at any level, but personally I would like them to provide a children's version (Which would suit my level of interest better).

timthorn• 10 years ago

Not saying that this is what you're arguing, but - I wish it wasn't assumed that children are only able to understand simple concepts. Younger kids might find it hard to get through dense prose, buy that doesn't mean that the ideas therein couldn't be understood with appropriate presentation.

If you've a child with a deep interest in an area, you get to the point where you've devoured the children's literature on the subject and are left grasping for new material that will satisfy their thirst for new knowledge in a form they can read themselves.

CaptSpify• 10 years ago

Maybe "beginner's version" would be a better way to phrase it?

branchless3• 10 years ago

This blog is like a guerrilla offshoot from the BoE from staff who are trying to tell us we are being robbed blind by the banks.

Best one is this:

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-inter...

Banks do not intermediate funds when lending they create new money. This has interest due on it. Create more to cover the interest or die.

Please HN have a read as I see so many disheartening comments on HN about finance. It's depressing.

alanwatts2• 10 years ago

Banks do not intermediate funds when lending they create new money. This has interest due on it. Create more to cover the interest or die.

Professor Franz Hormann of the Vienna University of Economics further elaborates on this catch-22 in his banned TED talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYWVbdSX7B4

digi_owl• 10 years ago

Banned?!

oneloop• 10 years ago

[citation needed]

notahacker• 10 years ago

This is not exactly secret knowledge you have to be a guerilla to let out. I mean, the bank itself does that in formal bulletins released on its website http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... and even produces video for people that don't like reading economic papers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvRAqR2pAgw

UK-AL• 10 years ago

I believe they have reserve requirements. They must keep x% of funds lent out, as cash in a bank.

This is what stops them from infinitely creating money.

branchless3• 10 years ago

From the page:

The fact that banks technically face no limits to instantaneously increasing the stocks of loans and deposits does not, of course, mean that they do not face other limits to doing so. But the most important limit, especially during the boom periods of financial cycles when all banks simultaneously decide to lend more, is their own assessment of the implications of new lending for their profitability and solvency. By contrast, and contrary to the deposit multiplier view of banking, the availability of central bank reserves does not constitute a limit to lending and deposit creation. This, again, has been repeatedly stated in publications of the world’s leading central banks.

chollida1• 10 years ago

This is a great site for anyone who is interested in macro economics and global credit issues.

I've followed it for the past year and here is a list of "curated" articles from the blog that I found interesting enough to bookmark and make notes on:

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/05/03/the-growth-of-peer-...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/03/22/1602/

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/03/18/

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/10/30/rational-and-behavi...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/10/20/does-oil-drive-fina...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/10/14/is-starting-a-new-m...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/11/19/regulatory-arbitrag...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/01/15/testing-the-test-ho...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/02/29/stress-tests-the-sm...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/03/31/modelling-banking-s...

The bank of England has been very lucky with the people it has had lead it in the past 20 years. It had Mervyn King lead it up until recently and since then Mark Carney, they stole him from the same position in Canada:(, has lead them. England's been very lucky to have these two people in charge of its fiscal path.

Canada has certainly missed Mark Carney's leadership.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-05-05/the-book-th...

jsprogrammer4• 10 years ago

The top post [0] leads with a factually incorrect assertion:

Peer-to-peer lending platforms (P2P platforms) emerged after the financial crisis by catering for pent-up demand for unsecured borrowing from individuals and small businesses.

Prosper was started in 2005 and the article's primary example, Zopa, started in 2004.

[0] https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/05/03/the-growth-of-peer-...

jonwachob91• 10 years ago

Maybe they are referring to the Tech bubble of the early 2000's? Kinda of a stretch but still possible...

jsprogrammer4• 10 years ago

Vague terminology is vague. The article was written in the last month (presumably); referring to 2000 as "the financial crisis" would be supremely dishonest given what we have experienced since then.

I get that banks provoke regular crises, so there are many that could be referred to, but I can't imagine this article was referring to the 2000 tech bubble.

Paul_S• 10 years ago

This is fluff. Is there a banking equivalent of (no longer available) NightJack?

(If you don't know because maybe you don't live in the UK, NighJack was a blog written by a cop, off the record)

dmix• 10 years ago

I found the few article's I read on the blog had pretty high quality content. Did you read any of them?

Bank Underground, the blog written by Bank of England staff

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