With the United States in a recession the double-speak is interesting. Some call the recession of 2000-2001 a “mini-recession.” Now HSBC’s Douglas Flint has a “technical recession.” HSBC finance director Douglas Flint said: “The issue now is the US slowdown and whether it enters a technical recession, and what that does to the credit card and unsecured books.” They will take a pounding Douglas, and here is why: HSBC is not Chase or CitiGroup. Your credit card operation is predatory. Your processing centers are slow. And, most importantly, your customers are not stupid.

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We received this report today. That is all we are going to say about the origin.

“I am unfortunately a current employee of HSBC working in the HFC division. Let me say that I apologize to all of you out there that have unknowingly fallen into the hands of this evil company. As I have read through this site I can tell you that much of what I have read is undoubtedly true. I was unaware of their illegal and unethical, morally incomprehensible practices prior to working for the company. Here are a few of the practices I have seen that are illegal:

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ZDNet Australia, which covers business technology news, reported that HSBC was considering ditching the BlackBerry and switching 200,000 employees to the iPhone. We did not report it because it was not important, other than spending shareholder money for 200,000 of the darned things. However, the original article looked professional, quoting HSBC’s Australia and New Zealand chief information officer, Brenton Hush. And poor Brenton may have a new career as chief information officer in the Bagdad Green Zone, since HSBC headquarters in London said the iPhone idea was rumor. Pure rubbish. “There are no current plans to replace the BlackBerry,” HSBC spokesman Donal McCarthy said Tuesday from the bank’s headquarters in London. “It is the business standard.”

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I’ll support HSBC on this one. Leading law firms representing HSBC and Hermitage Capital Management have been raided by Russian Interior Ministry officials in an attempt to link senior lawyers with an alleged tax fraud. This problem in Russia smacks of crooked investigators and problems in the Russian system. People are hesitant to report anything if the net result is an attack against those who report. The raids, which took place at four offices in Moscow, including Firestone Duncan, a US firm, appear to have targeted lawyers seeking to recover three investment companies owned by HSBC that were allegedly stolen in a complex web of fraud.

A reader in Kentucky said: “I did a Google search using the term “History of HSBC Computer Problems” and found several entries. It appears that HSBC has had at least 1 major computer crash every year since 1999. Not all crashes included all customers or departments, but all were major and took time to fix with reports of angry and frustrated customers. It makes me wonder, could this be a ploy to “accidently” lose history of late payments, mistakes, wrong doings or other data?”

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