From a regular commenter on the old blog to new Substack readers: welcome to the past!
Substack should be a more congenial platform technically in that it allows subthreads to organise the topics.. WordPress does not, and it gets confusing when several different conversations are going on at once.
A few months ago I examined my credit card statement because my repayments were not decreasing according to my own accounts. I looked at the transactions and I discovered that banks are charging me "rent on money" that comes from the government and separately interest. The two amounts are exactly the same so in effect the 20% interest is really 40% yet the bank advertises it as 20%.
The banks call it compound interest but it should be called double interest and I believe it should stop. If it does then housing becomes more affordable as typically the repayment of a loan will reduce by 30%.
Here is how the banks do it.
Early in each month the bank makes a transaction to increase my loan by the interest amount. You will see it on the statement as Interest.
This extends my loan by the amount but the bank does not record that I have paid my interest. What the bank has failed to do is to give me the interest amount as an extension on my loan and they should record that I have paid my interest. They don't do it and later I pay them an amount they say I owe them which is interest + capital repayment. I have an automatic payment and they take the interest + capital repayment and do not include the interest as a reduction in interest owed. It means I have paid interest twice but I cannot claim the two because the second interest payment does not reduce the capital but pays the interest a second time.
Can someone explain to me why the Reserve Bank and the Taxation Office does not stamp this out as it distorts the economy as loans create twice as much money as the Reserve Bank thinks and Banks pay a lot less tax than they should.
I have started a petition to ask all banks who do this to stop so-called compound interest and use simple interest. https://www.change.org/PayInterestOnce I have asked two banks to do it and they have not agreed but one did offer $500 for me to withdraw the complaint.
The four big banks in Australia were freed from compliance back in the 1980s. They have acted badly ever since. The Banking Act of 1959 still gives the RBA the option of cancelling banking licences. But none have ever been cancelled. Only the banking regulator can do anything about your issue. Try contacting them. Good luck.
Yes I have tried many times through submissions to enquiries and government consultation without anyone ever asking for more information or responding that they have considered it. I have been to community banks and they have rejected the idea because profits will be diverted to lenders and borrowers and that means the management may receive less personal rewards and the board will have less money to spend in the community. I have setup a cooperative that used the principles with members savings but self managed super funds were unable to invest in it and banks and other financiers were not interested because lenders get more profit from each loan with compound interest but over a longer time-frame. I am now looking at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that has 30 Billion to invest but is having difficulty in getting funds spent on clean energy generation and saving of energy in housing - but they are only distributing the funds through existing finance organisations. They will not distribute their funds to new finance organisations or to Cooperatives or Mutual organisations. The rules associated with government funding are clearly influenced by the banks and large multi-nationals. Have a look at the operation of the AEMO - the Australian Energy Market Operator - to see the outrageous rorting of the system by Distributors and Transmission businesses.
The way to beat the banks is to play them at their own game. Get rid of your credit card(s) and use personal loans instead. That way the bank cannot slip in unexpected fees. Switch accounts often to stop the banks ignoring your interests. Loyalty is not rewarded. So don’t be loyal to any one bank. Use tellers instead of an ATM. This costs the bank more. Under no circumstances agree to internet banking options. This costs the bank almost nothing to maintain. Insists on regular bank statements that are printed out in full. Go in to a branch at the end of every month and demand an updated bank statement. They hate that. Put your bank under pressure where it hurts the most - at the branch. Waste their time like they waist yours.
Thank you John. A civilised and civil addition to the conversation.
I've just read, and got annoyed again about, yet another pundit's declaration that, since Australian productivity had not increased, neither could wages. And given that all of the increase in recent Australian employment seems to have come from the public sector and that no-one has a clue how genuinely to measure the output of police, aged-care workers etc, not to mention most personal service workers of any stripe, I stand in abject wonder at the absurdity of such pronouncements.
I wonder if anyone here can help me to come to some acceptance of this seeming reality.
At last, real progress on V2G, with Australia showing the way: "“The energy regulator is looking to have bi directional charging (vehicle to grid) approved by the end of this year. " https://cleantechnica.com/2024/07/23/vehicle-to-grid-changes-down-under-ease-uptake/ Most of the E V carmakers, with the notable exception of Tesla, have been pre-equipping their cars for this, even offering half-way houses like V2L (vehicle-to-load); but absent agreed standards, nobody has been selling the more complex bidirectional wall chargers. Beyond that, you need to set up the complex automated option markets and write the algorithms to run them.
It's been a lot of hassle, with more to come, but the prize is substantial. The Australian vehicle fleet has 15m cars and 5m heavier vehicles. They will all be replaced by EV versions over the next 20 years. The total battery capacity can be guesstimated at 1,250 Gwh at 50 kwh each, 750 Gwh for the heavier vehicles at at 150 kwh each, total 2,000 Gwh. Assume only 10% is available to the grid, and you still have 200 Gwh, Snowy 2, cost A$12bn, will have a storage capacity of 350 Gwh a year. Unlike Snowy, the V2G capacity can be considerably stretched in an emergency.
The project has a lot of moving parts. The many solar households in Australia are likely to use their V2G capacity first to increase their cheap self-consumption during the evening peak, especially if they face ToD grid charges. Grid operators will be leery of relying on dispersed storage they don't fully control, and I suspect will prefer to treat the V2G pool as a safety operational reserve. In natural disasters, public agencies may need to commandeer V2G resources by remote overrides. Vehicle owners will need reassuring that their expensive batteries won't be damaged, which may lead to other carmakers (who issue the warranties) following Volkswagen into the electrical aggregator business; and that absent emergencies, their vehicles will still start the day with a standard 80% charge.
I used bulletin boards from the early on. It was very democratic - messy but free. with social media you cannot escape the ads. Once I turned off all ads on my computer access settings. I could not then even get into some social media sites. A ‘catch 22’ that forces compliance. I even get google trying to force me onto their site.
From a regular commenter on the old blog to new Substack readers: welcome to the past!
Substack should be a more congenial platform technically in that it allows subthreads to organise the topics.. WordPress does not, and it gets confusing when several different conversations are going on at once.
A few months ago I examined my credit card statement because my repayments were not decreasing according to my own accounts. I looked at the transactions and I discovered that banks are charging me "rent on money" that comes from the government and separately interest. The two amounts are exactly the same so in effect the 20% interest is really 40% yet the bank advertises it as 20%.
The banks call it compound interest but it should be called double interest and I believe it should stop. If it does then housing becomes more affordable as typically the repayment of a loan will reduce by 30%.
Here is how the banks do it.
Early in each month the bank makes a transaction to increase my loan by the interest amount. You will see it on the statement as Interest.
This extends my loan by the amount but the bank does not record that I have paid my interest. What the bank has failed to do is to give me the interest amount as an extension on my loan and they should record that I have paid my interest. They don't do it and later I pay them an amount they say I owe them which is interest + capital repayment. I have an automatic payment and they take the interest + capital repayment and do not include the interest as a reduction in interest owed. It means I have paid interest twice but I cannot claim the two because the second interest payment does not reduce the capital but pays the interest a second time.
Can someone explain to me why the Reserve Bank and the Taxation Office does not stamp this out as it distorts the economy as loans create twice as much money as the Reserve Bank thinks and Banks pay a lot less tax than they should.
I have started a petition to ask all banks who do this to stop so-called compound interest and use simple interest. https://www.change.org/PayInterestOnce I have asked two banks to do it and they have not agreed but one did offer $500 for me to withdraw the complaint.
The four big banks in Australia were freed from compliance back in the 1980s. They have acted badly ever since. The Banking Act of 1959 still gives the RBA the option of cancelling banking licences. But none have ever been cancelled. Only the banking regulator can do anything about your issue. Try contacting them. Good luck.
Yes I have tried many times through submissions to enquiries and government consultation without anyone ever asking for more information or responding that they have considered it. I have been to community banks and they have rejected the idea because profits will be diverted to lenders and borrowers and that means the management may receive less personal rewards and the board will have less money to spend in the community. I have setup a cooperative that used the principles with members savings but self managed super funds were unable to invest in it and banks and other financiers were not interested because lenders get more profit from each loan with compound interest but over a longer time-frame. I am now looking at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that has 30 Billion to invest but is having difficulty in getting funds spent on clean energy generation and saving of energy in housing - but they are only distributing the funds through existing finance organisations. They will not distribute their funds to new finance organisations or to Cooperatives or Mutual organisations. The rules associated with government funding are clearly influenced by the banks and large multi-nationals. Have a look at the operation of the AEMO - the Australian Energy Market Operator - to see the outrageous rorting of the system by Distributors and Transmission businesses.
The way to beat the banks is to play them at their own game. Get rid of your credit card(s) and use personal loans instead. That way the bank cannot slip in unexpected fees. Switch accounts often to stop the banks ignoring your interests. Loyalty is not rewarded. So don’t be loyal to any one bank. Use tellers instead of an ATM. This costs the bank more. Under no circumstances agree to internet banking options. This costs the bank almost nothing to maintain. Insists on regular bank statements that are printed out in full. Go in to a branch at the end of every month and demand an updated bank statement. They hate that. Put your bank under pressure where it hurts the most - at the branch. Waste their time like they waist yours.
Thank you John. A civilised and civil addition to the conversation.
I've just read, and got annoyed again about, yet another pundit's declaration that, since Australian productivity had not increased, neither could wages. And given that all of the increase in recent Australian employment seems to have come from the public sector and that no-one has a clue how genuinely to measure the output of police, aged-care workers etc, not to mention most personal service workers of any stripe, I stand in abject wonder at the absurdity of such pronouncements.
I wonder if anyone here can help me to come to some acceptance of this seeming reality.
At last, real progress on V2G, with Australia showing the way: "“The energy regulator is looking to have bi directional charging (vehicle to grid) approved by the end of this year. " https://cleantechnica.com/2024/07/23/vehicle-to-grid-changes-down-under-ease-uptake/ Most of the E V carmakers, with the notable exception of Tesla, have been pre-equipping their cars for this, even offering half-way houses like V2L (vehicle-to-load); but absent agreed standards, nobody has been selling the more complex bidirectional wall chargers. Beyond that, you need to set up the complex automated option markets and write the algorithms to run them.
It's been a lot of hassle, with more to come, but the prize is substantial. The Australian vehicle fleet has 15m cars and 5m heavier vehicles. They will all be replaced by EV versions over the next 20 years. The total battery capacity can be guesstimated at 1,250 Gwh at 50 kwh each, 750 Gwh for the heavier vehicles at at 150 kwh each, total 2,000 Gwh. Assume only 10% is available to the grid, and you still have 200 Gwh, Snowy 2, cost A$12bn, will have a storage capacity of 350 Gwh a year. Unlike Snowy, the V2G capacity can be considerably stretched in an emergency.
The project has a lot of moving parts. The many solar households in Australia are likely to use their V2G capacity first to increase their cheap self-consumption during the evening peak, especially if they face ToD grid charges. Grid operators will be leery of relying on dispersed storage they don't fully control, and I suspect will prefer to treat the V2G pool as a safety operational reserve. In natural disasters, public agencies may need to commandeer V2G resources by remote overrides. Vehicle owners will need reassuring that their expensive batteries won't be damaged, which may lead to other carmakers (who issue the warranties) following Volkswagen into the electrical aggregator business; and that absent emergencies, their vehicles will still start the day with a standard 80% charge.
I used bulletin boards from the early on. It was very democratic - messy but free. with social media you cannot escape the ads. Once I turned off all ads on my computer access settings. I could not then even get into some social media sites. A ‘catch 22’ that forces compliance. I even get google trying to force me onto their site.