The KLF knew bankers were pushers

Lawyers can be creative, and artists can have profound insights into matters legal and financial. An earlier project of mine on copyright and fair use grew out of a work by the KLF, a couple of musicians and artists from the U.K. who are worthy of even greater recognition than that they have received in their native land. Among other things, they wrote href="http://www.tomrobinson.com/resource/klf.htm" target="_blank">The Manual (How to have a Number One the Easy Way), a how-to guide on creating a number one pop hit. While The Manual is a work of brilliance at many levels, I was taken aback again today by the timeliness of one more aspect of the wisdom they impart therein:

Banks are in the business of making money by lending it. The more they lend the more they make. They want us, the punter, to become addicted for life to the false sense of security it gives us. Banks will go to extremes thinking up new and ingenious ways of getting us to borrow money from them. First and foremost they want us to get into property: “Buy a house,” because with your property as security they can always lend you more and more money. If things were to go badly wrong and you weren’t able to keep up the interest payments they can always force you out of house and home and get their money back that way.

Of course, it would be bad for the banks if they were seen to be throwing too many families onto the street or forcing businesses to the wall in order to redeem their loans. They would always prefer to lend more money so as to help pay off the interest on the earlier loans. Banks have spent millions over the past few years trying to destroy the public’s old impression of the bank manager in bowler, brolly and pinstripe, to the approachable and amiable sort of chap who will attempt at all times to say “Yes!”. They have only done this, not because they like being nicer, but to seduce you into coming in and borrowing more money. Remember, when you are going in to see a bank manager you’re going to see a pusher; a pusher dealing in one of the purest, most addictive drugs – money.