A couple from Meyersdale, Joburg, nearly lost their home as the bank that held the mortgage bond agreement, insisted they pay back the entire outstanding bond for being two weeks late on their payment. The Constitutional Court slapped Nedbank down, arguing that the couple had lawfully reinstated their bond, even though they were late in catching up on arrears.

Here's a case where Nedbank repossessed a Katlehong home for R10. You read that right. Ernest Mashaba and his family have been put through a decade of hell and have been evicted four times, each time re-occupying the house, believing the bank had made a mistake. Here's the kicker: Ernest Mashaba never missed a payment and has written confirmation from the bank that his mortgage loan is fully paid up. His story is little different from that of Johm Mojaki of Randfontein, who also has written confirmation from the bank that his loan is paid up. His house has also been sold behind his back. "The only way they will get me out of here is in a coffin," he says.

Michael Hudson is a former bank economist whose job it was to work out the balance of payments surplus of South American countries so the major banks could capture this surplus for themselves. In his new book J for Junk Economics, reviewed by Paul Craig Roberts, Hudson explains how banks have become the new "rentier class" that has displaced the feudal lords of old. They produce nothing, but capture rents in the form of interest that have no costs associated with them. 

Of all your assets, your home is the most important. More than 100,000 homes have been repossessed by banks since the Constitution came into effect more than 20 years ago. Most of these were repossessed because the home owners lacked sufficient knowledge of the law. The good news is that it is getting easier to prevent the banks getting away with this. The object of this article is to try and save your house and explore your legal defence options when the bank attempts to foreclose on your bond. 

Has US President Donald Trump, like his predecessors, been captured by Goldman Sachs? One would think so, looking at who he has just appointed to his administration. If that's the case, former Goldman Sachs alumni Nomi Prins says we can look forward to another administration doling out favours to the banks. Already, Trump has made six appointments comprising former Goldman Sachs employees. How did this onetime boutique bank end up on top of the world? Nomi Prins explains.

The National Credit Regulator (NCR) is seeking a high court order to stop banks from unilaterally taking money from customers’ savings accounts to settle outstanding balances on their credit agreements — a practice which the regulator says is widespread.

This is the season to be jolly, but in January and February the hangover sets in and the banks start issuing their seasonal blizzard of summonses. Now is the time to prepare yourself.

Here's another tale of heartache for the banks, this time involving FNB, which attempted to claim R74,144 from a customer who had acquired a vehicle by way of instalment sale. The problem is FNB arrived in court without the original documents. The judge made short work of FNB's case and booted it out of court. In this case, the defendent Adrian Hart represented himself using a DIY defence template developed by a debt defence specialist. 

This is a brief but brilliantly written video on what causes poverty. The banks are the architects of financial crises but have managed to shift blame to competitors or even to their clients. As we watch the derivatives crisis unfold at Deutsche Bank, this is a timely reminder that the next crisis could be the last for the fiat currency experiment that is now unravelling.

In a recent article in De Rebus, Advocate Douglas Shaw welcomes some recent changes to rules that allow courts to set reserve prices (but do not compel them). This means properties sold in execution may be sold at closer to market price. Shaw also bemoans the fact that SA's repossession regime is among the most backward in the world. More than 100,000 South Africans have had their lives ruined since the Constitution was enacted some 20 years ago.

The Brexit vote, leading to Britain's exit from the European Union, is likely to trigger similar calls from France, Netherlands and other European countries tethered to a sinking economic union and a dodgy Euro. Bank stocks are already seriously under pressure from weak corporate earnings and economic uncertainty. According to this report from CNBC, banks are now preparing for the worst.

You give a piece of legislation a name like the Financial Services Regulation Bill and you know people will yawn and turn the page. Yet buried in this proposed law are some whoppers. We are going to get not one, but two, giant bureaucracies that will cost between R4bn and R6bn a year, paid for of course by the consumer. We are adding layer upon layer of regulation in a fruitless attempt to prevent future financial crises. Nobel laureate George Stigler investigated the economic costs of regulation and came to the conclusion that bureaucracies often end up performing no discernible public good, or what he called regulatory capture.

Asset manager and chartered accountant Sunil Shah didn't read the fine print when signing an agreemernt for the rental of a photocopy machine with a Sasfin-associated finance company. So a machine that was advertised on the internet for R7,500 ended up costing him R15,000 even though he delivered it back to the company after just three months. This is because of loopholes that allow these rental companies to side-step the National Credit Act. BizNews reports on how this happened.

In this article Armand Rinier looks at how banks and other lenders are engaging in reckless lending. The practice is so common, it would require a book to cover all the creative ways banks are breaking the law. It's time to pull out your bank statements and see whether or not you are being gouged by the banks. 

If every debtor served with a summons defended the action, it would choke the legal system and force the banks to come up with better solutions for customers who have difficulties in meeting their monthly payments. It's an actuarial fact that the average mortgage borrower will either default or settle the bond within seven years. Banks know this. Despite well-intentioned laws, lenders are engaging in reckless lending on a daily basis. In this regular weekly column, Debt Nurse Armand Rinier will explain how to effectively protect your rights and assets when under threat from the banks.

Michael Gray has brought out a documentary The Banker Suicides, questioning whether the dozens of banker "suicides" since 2007 were actually suicides, whether they were stress-related, or was there something more sinister afoot. In several of these suicides, there are common threads and connections that went previously undetected.  

A forensic scientist is planning to bring a class action suit against FNB over its systemic failure to represent its clients' interests on online banking fraud cases. The trigger for this was an attempt by FNB to reach a partial rather than a full settlement of a client's claim that R300,000 was stolen out of her account. FNB attempted to push at least some of the blame on the client. 

Where is South Africa's spirit of protest over outrageous bank behaviour in removing people from their homes? Greek activists have taken to protesting outside court houses and successfully blocked 800 home repossessions in the process. Perhaps South Africans will wake up from their slumber and start a similar movement here. Any takers? 

Capitec is accused of making unjustified revenues of more than R1bn through its so-called multi-loan products. The accuser is Summit Financial Partners, which advises low income consumers with financial advice. The multi-loan products being sold by Capitec are claimed to generate margins of between 150% and 500%, according to Business Day.

In the second part of this series, William Black testifies before the Inquiry into the banking crisis in Ireland. He talks from a US perspective, but explains how to tell when banks are behaving recklessly (when their loan books are growing faster than the economy), how bankers have lobbied politicians to get rid of pesky legislation that inhibits their gambling instincts and how they have managed to avoid going to jail. This is fascinating testimony into the dark heart of modern banking.  

Professor William Black, an expert on banking and economics from the US, testified in 2015 before the Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis in Ireland. In his testimony, he pointed out that the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 is certain to repeat because none of of the criminal bankers that bankrupted the country had been sent to jail - unlike the "Savings and Loans" crisis nearly two decades earlier in the US, which resulted in more than 1,000 convictions. One of the indicators that tell us banks are making "liar loans" is the speed at which lending is growing. If Black is right, modern banking will sink us all. 

Morgan Stanley is the latest US bank to fess up to its role in the grand heist of 2008 when it fleeced investors and dumped subprime mortgages onto unsuspecting investors. It will cough up $3,2bn we learned this week. Bank of America agreed to pay $16,6bn in 2014.

Dr Michael Burry is the inspiration behind the blockbuster movie The Big Short. If he could predict the market crash of 2008, why couldn't the government and the Federal Reserve? When he asked these questions publically in 2010, he was investigated by the tax authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Here's how you do it: round up the bankers who sank your country into bankruptcy and lock them away. Ireland is seeking extradition from the US of the former CEO of Anglo Irish Bank for his part in Ireland's 2009 banking crisis. But Iceland is way ahead of the pack, jailing 26 bankers for a total of 74 years.

The SA Communist Party has come out swinging against profiteering financial institutions over recent news that 11m out of 19m South Africans with access to credit are over-indebted.