That was the headline, the other day, when the HSBC reported a fall in half yearly profits. It sounds bad and the usual suspects are on TV and in the papers telling us how the credit crunch is getting worse. Oh my God! This is Europe’s largest bank and even they can’t survive, what will become of us. Images of money men hurling themselves out of windows comes to mind.
Then you read a bit further and realise the bank made £5.2 billion in the first six months of the year. The people in charge must be shitting themselves. How can they survive, what can they do? Over five billion quid in six months and this is a bad thing, yeh right.
They lend money to people who can’t afford the repayments, they make huge losses in North America, they run crappy little branches with queues to the next town and zero customer service (apologies to the people of Bombay) and they still make huge profits.
This is not doom and gloom. The headline should read ‘Crappy business makes huge profits – hope for us ALL’.