If you were the sole party in charge of the decision-making at a banking institution, would you honestly give yourself the loan you seek to apply for from the bank? Of course, this is assuming in some way that in this hypothetical situation that decision was completely independent of your need or desire to borrow the cash.
That’s how you must think if you ever want to walk out of a bank with your loan application having been approved. It’s perhaps common and basic knowledge by now that banks and financial institutions of a similar type simply don’t take risks when it comes to investing the money they’re tasked with keeping safe for their clients. To be approved for a loan, you’d have to strictly meet the requirements they have of their potential debtors, which it must be said can be some rather strict requirements in the case of many banks.
The big banks which keep their cheque books tightly shut aren’t necessarily always right about the potential outcome of the loans they refuse. For example, if your local community recently adopted that tomato-throwing tradition from across the Mediterranean, getting a loan so that you can supply tonnes and tonnes of those tomatoes would be a great short term investment, would it not? Try filling that out as motivation for securing that loan from the banks and they’ll probably black list you for wasting their time!
That’s where the bigger picture of the world of the finances comes in – a bigger picture which unfortunately cannot be seen by many people who would benefit most from it. This is why the good old days were indeed the good old days by way of the financial sector. As opposed to all the leveraged junk which is traded as value, in the good old days the financial sector pretty much worked in tandem with production.
True value was funded and that’s why a more community based economy existed. You knew the local grocer to the point that if you were short a few pounds a day or two before the end of the month, you were given that little bit of groceries to tide you over on credit of sorts, with a smile to go with. It was perhaps a less formal iteration of what short term loans are in that the bigger financial picture suitably justifies the extension of credit in specific situations which warrant that arrangement.
Nowadays you have a fat chance of something like getting your groceries on credit with the big grocery chain stores taking over.
So I guess to sum everything up, I’d say that this game of the finances we’re all forced to play can be won quite comfortably if more people could see the bigger picture. It is this financial bigger picture which will help the entire community lift each other up and progress together. Unfortunately that proves to be quite the challenge.