# 58. They do the banks' dirty work

I have a dream

- Bank disclosure

Banks give us truck loads of paper all in the name of telling us what we are signing up to.

Even if we read it most of us would still have a hazy idea of credit card terms, loan terms and bank fees.

Before clients sign loan documents banks insist that their customer's lawyer explains what it means. Banks do this as they think that judges deliberately let off supposedly confused little old ladies who say that they did not know what they were signing. Heaven forbid.

I object to banks wasting paper, my time and their customer's money in this way, but I have a dream.

I have a dream that one day a bank's disclosure documents will be judged on their capacity to be easily understood by all God’s children and not on the weight of the paper provided.

I have a dream that one day even the legal departments of banks, sweltering with the heat of verbosity, will be transformed into an oasis of brevity.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a world where banks do not insist that I need to pay a lawyer to be told what will happen if I guarantee their loans and they default.

I have a dream today!

And when this happens, when bank disclosure documents are just one A4 page saying “You and your guarantors will be pursued into hell if you do not pay up” trees will be saved, lawyers will be released from telling people the obvious and be able to join hands with the bank clerks who prepare this boring paperwork and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

© Paul Brennan 2009

Click here to see and read the speech "I have a dream" by Martin Luther King Jr

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