Is there a lottery where everybody can win and will win? No of course not! Do chances go along with risks? Yes of course! But why do we not want to believe it? Why don’t we act this way? Why are we putting out money at Icesave or DSB Bank?

This week we had our own bank that went (almost) bankrupt. Not as a result of the global credit crisis, but as a combination of bad management and the idea of somebody that  it would be a good thing to make a call for everybody to withdraw their deposits from that bank. And so it happened. The main cause was that not the creditors of the company, but the mortgage debtors, who received their (too high) loans in combination with very expensive insurances. There were some Robin Hoods (really!?) that tried to solve the problems of these people, who were not able to pay their mortgages anymore (as the DSB Bank had given them too high loans). And one of these Robin Hoods suggested that the mortgage victims would be better of with the bankruptcy of the bank and suggested a bank-run.

Are the debtors of the bank better off now? No probably not, because they cannnot make a new arrangement with the bank. But now we have a lot more victims. Al the people that have savings above € 100K and have bought subordinated deposits will probably loose a certain percentage (and maybe all) of their money.

But who is to blame for all of this? Is that the Robin Hood with his great idea? Is that the bank director / owner of DSB Bank, Mr. Dirk Sheringa? No I do not think that they are too blame, although they all are not clean either. But the people who put their valuable money in that little bank have to be blamed. They did it themselves!

They followed their greed. They wanted the highest interest rates for their money but they did not (wanted to) realise that there is no such thing like a free lunch. And also taken into account the recent past. Since last year we must be aware of the fact that you better can have debts to a bank than receivables. We have seen banks going into serious trouble. We transferred our money to other banks. But have we forgotten that all? I do think so. The greed wins again. And as we know greed is one of the 7 deadly sins. How deadly will it be for all the people who trusted their money to the DSB Bank? I think not. “Things can always be worse”, optimistic people like me would love to say.

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