Circle 1: the Products

CIRCLE 1: THE PRODUCTS

I’m the Belgian wallet.
I usually consist of a debit card to withdraw some money associated to a current account, a credit card for some purchases, a savings account to put aside some of the money I earn, credit for unsuspected spending, a mortgage for my housing, many insurances and often an investment in the form of savings bonds or shares. / 1
I'm a current account.
Associated with a debit card, I am essential for every financial transaction including receiving a salary and payment of bills via transfer.
If my users exceed the amount of money available, then I go negative and I have to pay extra interests. / 1
I'm a savings account
I'm a money deposit available whenever my users need me, in a bank or a savings bank. I generate interests, which are usually quite low. / 1
I'm a credit card
I make it possible to make immediate payments all around the world without necessarily having enough money on my client's account. To repay this money, my users pay the complete amount the following month or in many payments over many months, with the interests of course.
My purpose is to facilitate the life of my clients so they can buy whatever they dream of.
What they don't say about me is that I'm often accountable for what we call indebtedness because I encourage people to live beyond their means and to spend money they don't have, sometimes without calculating. / 1
I'm an installment credit
I provide my clients with a sum of money that they will repay over periodic payments, mostly monthly payments of the same amount. My repayment includes interests of course. Thanks to me, consumers can have access to consumption goods that they wouldn't be able to pay in one payment. / 1
I'm an investment
Whether it be an investment fund, a mutual fund, a share, a cooperative share or a savings bond, my goal is to offer a financial profit on an initial amount. To seduce, I offer various levels of risks and profitability so I can suit anyone who has some financial reserve. / 1
I am a C.D.S.
I am a CDS, standing for credit default swaps. I am a kind of insurance that protects the lender against default by the borrower. The lender wants to protect himself by paying an annual bonus to the bank. If the borrower repays the debt properly, the bank keeps the money. However, if the borrower doesn’t pay, the bank pays the lender instead of the borrower. This is just like fire insurance; you pay insurance that may never serve in a lifetime.
I was originally created to cover risks related to credit, but nowadays I am used more and more to speculate. / 1
I am a bond
I am issued by a state, a non-profit organization or a company. My goal is to attract capital. I am quoted on the stock exchange, so I can be sold or bought. / 1
CIRCLE 2: THE ACTORS
I'm the national bank
I'm the national bank of Belgium. I'm the bank of the banks. Every bank has an account with me where it can deposit or withdraw money depending on the demand of its clients.Today, I don't decide on monetary policies alone. I do what the European Central Bank decides. I still have some specific missions and I'm the only bank that can issue currency.
I'm also the bank of the federal state. Finally, and it's not a small task, I operate all the interbank payment system. Nowadays, there are millions of operations between Belgian banks but also with foreign ones. / 2
I'm a commercial bank
I'm a commercial bank; that means a bank where everybody deposits their money on an account. I grant credits to people, businesses and even to the states.
I use my clients’ money to invest in funds, shares, mutual funds, savings bond, natural resources, insurances, … anything that can help me make money.
I always decide to finance projects which are the most profitable. I don’t care too much about the impacts. Anyway, clients rarely ask where their money goes and that suits me well. / 2
I'm Lehman Brothers, an investment bank
Officially closed on September 15th, 2008, I was one of the biggest banks of my age.
Present in many countries, I used to propose diverse financial services to my clientsas an investment bank: shares, bonds, market research, capital investment and private banking.
The worldwide financial crisis, caused by the subprimes, brought my shutdown and I had to fire all my employees.
People say I ran into the wall by lying on my own results. At the start of 2010, a report from the American justice revealed that since 2007, I had been systematically hiding my debts. Even our audit agency, Ernst & Young, turned a deaf ear and lied on the financial abyss I was creating. / 2
I'm a bank agent
I work in an agency and I'm in direct contact with the clients of the bank. Nowadays, I see them less because we are trying to send them to self-banking as much as possible so they can take care of the common operations themselves: money withdrawals, deposits and transfers.
Our role is to sell credits and advise our clients about savings and investment. When I say “advise”, I'm exaggerating a bit as we are under a lot of pressure because of the fact that we work on commission: the money we make depends on how many products we can sell. Our goal is not to sell products which are adapted to the client's needs but to sell a product on which we can make more money. I don't really know what I'm selling to my clients. / 2
I am the IMF
I allow states to get funding thanks to loans for structural problems or big investments. To do so, I condition my help to the adoption of “structural adjustment programs” inspired by neoliberal policies: cuts in public spending (education, health, Government), opening domestic markets to competition, promoting exports, etc. / 2
I am a shareholder
I am the owner of a fraction of a commercial company. How? Through the stock exchange, I bought a share issued by a company that needed funding. In doing this, I also take a risk, but I obviously expect a financial return through dividends and profits given to shareholders. / 2
I am the stock exchange
My purpose is to exchange shares, bonds and all sorts of other products such as derivatives. My original purpose was to put in contact people who needed funding and people who wanted to invest. All of this has now changed. The exchanged products don’t have much to do with the real economy anymore. As a matter of fact, most operations are now done by computers, with or without human intervention. / 2
I am JérômeKerviel, an almost ordinary trader
I am a former trader at the SociétéGénérale and I’m quite famous for a financial scandal. I used to buy and sell all sorts of products on the financial markets. I was accused by my former bosses of losing 5 billions euros, all by myself and without any supervision.
I was sentenced to 3 years in prison and asked to pay the money back. But the SociétéGénérale eventually decided not to claim those 5 billion euros from me. / 2
I am a hedge fund
I invest in almost everything: on the stock market, in bonds, currencies, raw materials, real estate, art work and mainly in derivatives.
Understand that my role is to guarantee maximum profitability for my clients. Our strategy is to speculate aggressively on exchange rates, state debts, cereals, etc. / 2
I’m the financial markets
Banks come to me to get funding in order to invest and speculate. I offer low interest rates to banks which collect savings as I know that I will get my money back. Banks are not the only ones to come to me, but also hedge funds, insurance companies, other companies, private individuals, etc. / 2
I am Standard and Poor’s, a notation agency
I am a private company which rates the risk of an investment. I have rates from AAA+ to D. The higher the rate, the lower the risk.
However, I am not free from any error, but I call all the shots. / 2
CIRCLE 3: THE IMPACTS
I am Samantha, the victim of a subprime mortgage
I live in the United States and I’ve just sold my house, although I paid for my mortgage every month for more than 6 years for my family and I to be able to live in it with dignity. I am a victim of the famous credit that made the world of finance collapse in the United States and in the rest of the world. / 3
I am Zambia, a victim of a vulture fund
Africa has been the favorite prey of vulture funds for a few years: I, Zambia, am no exception. These private investment funds legally extort financial resources which are vital to the development of countries of the south. Their method: buy very cheap debts of developing countries and then oblige the court to pay the full price, i.e. the original amount of the debt plus interest, penalties and diverse justice fees. In my case, it is Donegal company that is claiming $ 55 million from me! Yet at the time it is Romania which lent me money: $ 15 million. They are the predators of finance. / 3
I'm George, a resident of the Cayman Islands
I live on a beautiful Caribbean island, coveted by tourists, banks and offshore companies. A tax haven is often a small sovereign territory, whose taxes are extremely low or nonexistent. The goal is to attract a lot of capital to make lucrative business. I live in a paradise, but only for large fortunes, not for the little people. / 3
I'm Tisha, I live in the Ivory Coast
I currently suffer from malnutrition as my parents can no longer meet our food needs. Prices have increased so much and so quickly that we cannot afford enough food.
We didn’t have this problem before. Some say that we are the victims of financial speculation on agricultural products. Foodstuffs, such as wheat or barley, have become very valuable for investors and speculators, causing insane price increases. We are millions to suffer from it. Today, about a billion people suffer from hunger, even though the rich countries pledged in the Millennium Development Goals to reduce this number by half by 2015. We are far away, but who is to blame ... / 3
I’m Pierre, the victim of a credit opening
I was promised the moon and the stars if I opened a credit that would put an unlimited amount of money at my disposal. Obtaining credit facilities used to be a bank affair but nowadays we can obtain credit from other sources like supermarkets or multimedia magazines, most of the time with a credit card. I didn’t have to pay back a fixed amount of money over a fixed period of time, and that is what led to excessive debt. Once I had the first loan paid, I obtained another one. I didn’t need another contract, the first one was enough. The opening of a credit is the most expensive credit formula.The tax interests can be up to 19%. It’s so easy to obtain them that we even use them for day-a-day expenses. / 3
I’m the atmosphere.
I am overloaded with CO2. The financial sector is in part responsible for this, in a direct or indirect way. Despite what we usually think, the deposits and investments of private individuals don’t stay in the safe box of their bank. It is used to finance economic activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions. 5000 euros in a current account indirectly contaminates the atmosphere as much as a 4-wheel drive in one year. / 3
I am Gamal, a victim of the dam Project in Ileus
I live in the area that is going to be flooded for the project of the hydroelectric dam. In fact, an international consortium has just approved a 1.2 billion euros loan to Turkey for the construction of a controversial dam, the Ileus dam, in the South East of the country. The Turkish State has promised to compensate our eviction financially but we know that it won’t be enough and that the economic progress it will bring raises other questions: serious ecological consequences, a loss of archaeological and historic heritage, job losses, etc. / 3
I am Ahmad, a farmer and victim of land grabbing
I am a farmer but nowadays I can’t make a living out of it because my land doesn’t belong to me any more. In Pakistan, which is not able to feed all its refugees, private companies have already bought thousands of acres of land for the United Arab Emirates government. I am not the only one to face this situation. Many African countries are the victims of land grabbing: Angola, Mali, Malawi, Nigeria and Sudan are giving away their land without imposing compensation to guarantee a fair exchange. / 3
I am Alexandros, a victim of Greek State bonds
Like all my fellow citizens, I was one of the victims of budget cuts in education or health, due to the bad management of our politicians over the years. But that is not all: Greece is also a victim of speculation. Speculators saw a really good opportunity to make money. They first bet on the lowering price of the bonds issued by the state and on possible bankruptcy with the famous CDS (credit default swaps).
In fact, I have lost my job in public services because Greece had to show to the financial markets that they were following the advice of the IMF, drastically reducing the public budget.
We were victims of speculation, corruption and private banks, and we are now penalized by austerity policies, imposed by the IMF, the EU, and creditors of course. / 3
I am the Belgian public debt.
I represent all of the loans that Belgium has had to ask for to finance its development policies. It now amounts to 375 billion euros, which equals to 100% of the GDP. There are eleven million Belgians, that’s 34,000 euros per person. But careful, this is only the public administration’s debt, and it does not include the debt of companies and households. It is the future generations that will have to pay back this huge amount of money to our creditors. / 3
I am the oil slick in the Mexican gulf
I am a natural disaster caused by the constant search for profit, without any consideration for our ecosystem. This disaster is not a matter of chance. In fact, huge investments were made by BP (British Petroleum) and other companies in offshore drilling to look for oil, as deep and as fast as possible. / 3
I’m George, a cheated Fortis shareholder
My grandfather and my father were clients of Fortis. They had bought shares from the bank, just like a lot of other people. We had never asked ourselves questions about the bank and we had never thought it could go bankrupt and we would lose so much money. / 3
I am Liu, a victim of Wal-Mart shareholders
I live in China and like most of my compatriots, I moved from the countryside to the coastal cities to look for a job that would allow me to take care of my family. I am a victim of the second biggest company in the world, Wal-Mart. For the sake of profitability, their shareholders forced us to work in horrible conditions, for 12 to 16 hours per day without a pause. / 3
I am AungSauSuuKyi
I am a political woman living in Burma and a figure of the non-violent opposition to the military dictatorship of my country. I received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. Because of investments (made possible thanks to corruption) from companies like Total or Chevron, the military junta was able to unite and install a sanguinary dictatorship, leaving the population with very few liberties. Without those investments, the dictatorship would not have been able to keep on stifling the voice of the people. / 3