136 February 2016 www.bahrainthismonth.com lastword GEG HOPKINS As rare as a second hand coffin, you are about to read a very serious column indeed. It has never been more serious, and we mean serious, as we speak of your hard earned cash, which is about to be whisked away from you as payment for your basic needs. Sure, something has to be done. But it is a vicious circle and, if gambling were legal, go for the kill, bet your entire life’s savings that your boss will not increase your salary to compensate. Oh my God! Within a few months, there might be no expatriates here to read this column. Don’t worry; you would not have missed anything, because the writer of the same will be two perk cheeks going yonder. Goneski! Most of us having no choice but to saddle up. We can’t win, can we? Some survey banded about on the news channels during January, stated that about 10 people in the world possess more wealth than the combined amount held by the rest of us plebs in our billions with sod all and piggy banks which echo louder than the Grand Canyon; add it all up and still it doesn’t match the pile that some like George Soros and his cocktail friends have stashed in Swiss banks. Digging Karl Marx up is looking ever more favourable. Let’s go back a few decades. Allegedly, crime didn’t happen much and, because there were considerably less people, the odds of winning the ‘football pools’ were much greater. Now it is the lottery and you have two chances of winning that; a dog’s chance and no chance at all! It is the very same with endowment and Old Man’s Rant managing your personal funds are shameless. It is a vile culture that has spread through financial institutions, some of which have been bailed out only to repeat their sins all over again. After faithfully investing for 20 or 25 years, many are presented with the cruel reality that the return is far less than deposited. You are hoping for a pension or nest egg reasonable enough to live on and, to your surprise, you find that had you put your money in an old mattress and thrown it on a landfill, you would have gained more. You would not have paid gross amounts of commissions to highfalutin suits parading around expensive offices claiming film star salaries, each of which has done absolutely zero for you. During the ‘90s this behaviour was rife with people losing half their savings or more and no recourse to the law. The British government stepped in and, under duress, ordered a pittance in compensation (but were sparse with the publicity), which the banks and insurance companies challenged as if hard done by, but had to pay out as they sniggered at the penance. Isn’t this why we pay those commissions for them to ‘manage’ our money? It should be a law, and strict law at that, that investment, insurance, banks and the like that offer these endowment policies should clearly state, by audit, exactly how much they made during your 20-odd-year slog, compared to your own payout and match it. They might state their commissions if asked, but they never reveal how they used YOUR money to make far more than you get in return. One might even be inclined to call it ‘fraud’, but we couldn’t possible say that could we? See now! You were warned that the column was serious this month! insurance policies with benefits. When oil prices were very low, most of us could bank on good returns with our investments. Are they related – who knows? Do not get confused with financial institutions that handle billionaire’s funds. They NEVER LOSE! For the past couple of decades, well-known names with huge assets send out their ‘commission-based’, well-suited robots to court us, the plebs, bombarding us with smooth talk, having plied LinkedIn and any other social media to gain a ‘first name’ and telephone number to call. These days, they are as fictitious as a Nigerian scam, but because we are all so desperate to survive, we try what we believe to be honest and legitimate channels to enhance our own small spoils. However, those
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