the spanish bank version

At the time (early 2009), Europe’s benchmark rate was hovering around the 5% mark. Within a year it had crashed below 1% and is now languishing deep below zero. As a result, most Spanish banks were able to enjoy all the benefits of virtually free money while avoiding one of the biggest drawbacks: having to offer customers dirt-cheap interest rates on their variable-rate mortgages. For millions of Spanish homeowners, the banks’ sleight of hand cost them an average of €2,000 per year in additional interest payments, during one of the worst economic crises in living memory. Many ended up losing their homes.

While legal, the bank’s behavior was eventually deemed “abusive” and “non-transparent” by Spain’s Supreme Court. In May, 2013, the court ruled that three financial institutions named in a class-action suit would have to reimburse all their customers the money they’d surreptitiously overcharged them, but only from that moment on. The court argued that the law couldn’t be applied retroactively to 2009, when the banks began introducing the clauses, since it would potentially cripple their finances.

A more recent ruling that applies to the whole sector adopted the same reasoning: banks need only reimburse customers the money they lost from May 2013.

Not everybody agrees. The European Commission argues that the refunds should extend all the way back to the first mortgage payments, the rationale being that if a clause is declared void, “it is so from its origin.”

It makes perfect sense — until you factor in the fact that if most Spanish banks were forced to refund all the money they had thus extracted from their customers, they would be even less solvent than they are today, raising the prospect of more bail-ins and/or bail outs, which would in turn mean more contagion risk in Europe’s fracturing financial system and more public debt on Spain’s burgeoning balance sheets.

All of which is out of the question – with Italy’s banks teetering on the brink of collapse. Hence, today’s decision by the EU’s advocate general that Spain’s national courts can be trusted to strike the right balance between consumer rights and the broad needs of the financial system. Like Spain’s Supreme Court, the advocate general placed “macroeconomic considerations” (legalese for “what is best for the banks”) before the microeconomic needs of consumers.

It's long at 33 min, but Paul Jay and Bob Scheer of Truthdig hash out the current state of the election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5BkcekqemM
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5BkcekqemM]

And again there's the young turks making fun of day 3 of the RNC
(also a little long at 22 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO_XGZaRy8
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO_XGZaRy8]

to post a video earlier in the week, but now it wouldn't make a difference, since the plagiarism kerfuffle has blown over.

I just ran across an interesting piece about Ivanka and Chelsea. Here's the link.

Sounds as though they have managed--or are tying to--remain friends.
Interesting.

Mollie

“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit, and, therefore, to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)

National Mill Dog Rescue (NMDR) - Dogs Available For Adoption

Unless they were like Queen Elisabeth or Queen. Titular for one. Maybe both of them. Although not sure either is quite over being flamboyant like Princess Diana or Freddy Mercury. More fashion sense out of them.

Canada likes QE, far away across the Atlantic. We got QE, another payout to banksters.