Learn the Secrets of Finance

Finance sells certainty. That’s the pitch. Precise numbers, historical data, bar charts, line graphs, and future projections. But beneath that surface, there’s something less predictable and far more human—uncertainty, manipulation, fear, and misdirection. Mystery. Not the romantic kind, but the kind that keeps people guessing while someone else profits from the confusion. It’s not a bug in the system—it’s baked into how finance operates. The mystery isn’t just part of the market. In many corners, it is the market.

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Where the Darkness Lives

Money runs the show. It is not just your bills, your rent, or the cost of your coffee; money decides who gets healthcare, who gets bailed out, who writes the laws, and who gets left behind. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just the way the machine runs.

Finance, in theory, is about managing capital efficiently. In practice, it’s often about exploiting loopholes, nudging policy, and extracting value from people who don’t have the resources to fight back. Strip away the PR gloss, the inspirational quotes, and the business lingo, and what’s left is something far more raw: a system built to benefit those already sitting at the top of the pyramid.

Finance doesn’t have a conscience, it has incentives. And those incentives often reward short-term gain over long-term impact, shareholder profits over worker quality of life, and opacity over transparency. Think of insider trading, payday loans, tax havens, and derivatives so complex they’re designed to be misunderstood. Not accidents, not exceptions. They are features, not bugs.

The uncomfortable truth? Much of modern finance isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as intended.

Take a Peak

You’ve probably already had a taste of the contradiction: why is it that the people giving out credit are the same ones lobbying against bankruptcy protections? Why are major investment banks allowed to take risky bets with public safety nets? Why does a hedge fund make billions on foreclosures while families lose their homes?

This article is not here to make you feel helpless or conspiratorial. It’s here to show you what most finance classes and personal finance blogs conveniently skip. Not because they’re hiding anything (although sometimes they are), but because it’s uncomfortable to admit how skewed the system really is.

We’ll walk through how money flows behind the scenes, why “financial innovation” often means building traps instead of tools, and how entire markets can be structured to offload risk onto people who never agreed to play the game. You’ll see why financial literacy alone isn’t enough and why the people calling for more of it often profit from your confusion.

This is not a crash course in budgeting or an article about why you should save for retirment. It’s a look at the machine behind the curtain, and what happens when it spins for profit instead of people.

Who Should Read This?

If you’ve ever looked at headlines filled with news about tax-financed bailouts, market crashes, crypto scam,s and billion-dollar bonuses paid to executives in the middle of a recession, and thought, how the hell does this keep happening? If so, keep reading.

This article is for anyone who understands the basics of money but wants to go a level deeper. Not into abstract theories or textbook models, but into the motives, patterns, and realities that define real-world finance. You might be a college student who’s just opened their first investment account. Or maybe you’re working a 9-to-5, trying to make sense of a retirement plan designed long before you were hired. Or maybe you’re just tired of hearing that personal budgeting is the cure-all for systemic failure.

This article isn’t going to offer you the key to wealth, but it will help you understand why and how wealth is hoarded, and how the system is constructed to aid in this process. It won’t give you tips to beat the market, but it might show you why the market is often rigged to beat you.

The Language Barrier in Finance

If you’ve ever tried to read a credit card agreement without blacking out from boredom or rage, you already know: the system is built to confuse you. And confusion isn’t a side effect, it’s in the core of the product. Banks and financial institutions don’t just benefit from you being unsure, they rely on it. From complex late fees to overdraft penalties that compound before you even know you’re in the red, the real money isn’t in the services. It’s in the slip-ups. One missed payment? That’s $35. A check you forgot to cancel? Another $25. Multiply that by millions of people and it’s a billion-dollar business, off the backs of people just trying to stay afloat. It’s a business model dressed up as customer service. Instead of a reminder, you get push notifications after you’ve already been charged. You get 20-page agreements designed to look boring enough to ignore. Because the less you know, the more you’ll pay. And no, they’re not in a rush to change that.

Ever try reading a mortgage loan disclosure? How about a retirement plan policy? They’re not exactly bedtime reading unless your dream is to fall asleep face-first onto a bunch of legal jargon. This isn’t just about complicated terms. It’s about intentional design. The more convoluted the language, the less likely you are to question it. Contracts hide behind layers of legalese. Terms and conditions are buried under technical phrasing that’s just vague enough to let banks shift the goalposts whenever it suits them.

Finance speaks a language most people were never taught, and those who are fluent are the ones writing the rules. When people can’t understand the fine print, they stop asking questions. And when they stop asking questions, fees slide in undetected, rates creep up, and “terms subject to change” becomes a loophole wide enough to drive a truck through.

APR. Variable interest. Asset class. Compound yield. Sounds smart, right? That’s the point. Jargon doesn’t just confuse, it intimidates. It shuts down conversation before it starts. The use of dense, specialized (yet often also vague) language is less about clarity and more about power. If you don’t know the terms, you’re not invited to the conversation. And if you’re not in the conversation, you’re just a line item on a balance sheet.

The problem isn’t that these words don’t have meaning. The problem is that instead of teaching people what they mean, the financial industry use these words to build a cloak of authority. Suddenly it’s not enough to save money; you need to “optimize your portfolio for tax-efficient growth within your asset allocation strategy.” And if you don’t understand what that means, it’s not the system’s fault. It’s yours. Or so they’ll have you believe.

The truth is, you don’t need a finance degree to understand how your own money works. But they’d prefer you think otherwise. Because as long as finance stays wrapped in jargon, it stays in the hands of the people who profit from your silence. So next time someone says “it’s complicated,” ask who made it that way, and who’s getting paid for keeping it that way.

Financial Products That Hurt More Than Help

Predatory Lending in a New Fancy Suit

Payday loans are easy to hate. We all know that the fees are outrageous, the terms brutal, and the traps obvious. We understand that one needs to be desperate to take one. But modern finance has now dressed up the old crappy payday loan in a friendlier packaging. Buy-now-pay-later apps and subprime credit cards are spinning the same idea, but in a nicer dress. They offer a quick solution right here and now, take more of your money later, and lock people in when they’re least able to push back.

Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) apps seem harmless until you realize they encourage overspending, then hit you with late fees and collection calls. Subprime credit cards promise approval but come with hidden fees, insane interest rates, opaque conditions, and fine print that turns a $300 limit into a $600 problem in a week.

What ties these various apps and cards together? They target people who can’t afford the alternatives. If you already have money, you get credit offers that come with actually useful perks, such as cashback, zero interest, grace periods, rewards, travel insurance, purchase insurance, and consigliere services. If you don’t, you get horrible terms and a permanent spot inside the financial hamster wheel.

Insurance Policies That Don’t Pay Out

Most people buy insurance hoping they’ll never need it. But when they do, e.g. after a car crash, a house fire, or a medical emergency, they often find out just how slippery “coverage” can be. Turns out, the fine print isn’t there to protect you. It’s there to protect them from paying you. Exclusions, loopholes, vague language, and straight-up denial tactics make filing a claim feel like applying for parole. Homeowners find out their flood wasn’t the “right kind” of flood. Drivers discover they need more paperwork than for a court trial. Health insurance companies deny claims automatically, betting that someone struggling with a serious health problem wont have the time, energy, and resources to fight them.

They call it “cost management.” What it really is: promising you peace of mind, then hoping you give up when it matters. Because the longer they delay, the more they save. And if you settle for less or walk away entirely, that’s money straight to their bottom line.

Debt Consolidation: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?

Debt consolidation sounds clean. Simple. One payment instead of five. A lower interest rate. Breathing room. Don´t get me wrong, debt consolidation can be a smart move. But many companies that aggressively advertise a debt consolidation services to consumers are not working with our best interest in mind. Beneath the appealing sales pitch, there is often a shuffle of numbers rather than good move forward.

Companies sell it as a reset button, but it usually comes with fees, penalties, and sometimes worse terms than the original debt. Some plans stretch out the repayment plan so long that you pay double or triple compared to your original situation. Others require you to close existing credit accounts, which tanks your credit score and locks you out of many future options. In the worst cases, shady consolidation firms take your money, make no payments on your behalf, and leave you deeper in debt and with a worse credit score than when you started. They prey on desperation, on people just trying to stay above water, and they know that many of their clients (victims) wont have the resources to fight them.

The sad part? Debt consolidation can work. It can truly be beneficial for an individual that is struggling to manage a complex debt situation. But it rarely does when it is carried out through one of these shady businesses.

In cases where debt consolidation is necessary, it can usually be arranged without the use of a professional debt consolidation service. In essence, debt consolidation means that you take out a bigger loan, and use the money to immediately repay your smaller debts. Instead of juggling many different debts, you now have one big loan to repay, which means one monthly payment instead of many. Typically, you pay a lower interest rate on the bigger loan than you would on super-expensive payday loans, credit card debt, and similar, which means there will be more money in your monthly budget that can be spent on actually paying down the principal (the money you owe) instead of just making interest payments.

As you can see, debt consolidation is not some magical solution that can only be obtained through a specialized service. It is also not a magical wand that will erase your debts. You are using one big loan to get rid of many small debts. Hopefully, you have managed to negotiate a lower interest rate on the new loan. With fewer debts to juggle, you might also decrease the instances of late fees, and you can put that money towards the principal as well. Depending on the situation, it can be useful to apply for a loan with fairly long repayment period for your debt consolidation, to ensure that you can actually make the correct payment every month. A longer repayment period means paying more in interest over time (bad) and waiting longer to get rid of the debt (also bad), but it is still better than to have a more ambitious repayment schedule and fail to keep up with it. It is important to weigh the pros and cons before you make a decision, and also find out if you are allowed to make extra payments towards the principal during months when you can afford it.

High-Fee Investment Schemes

Everyone wants to “build wealth,” but so many of the investment schemes out there are not about making you wealthy; they are about taking your money and using them to make someone else wealthy. The investment world is full of services that charge more than they’re worth, wrapped up in opaque language designed to sound smarter than you and hide the inconvenient truths.

There are for instance a multitude of unnecessary “financial advisors” out there who should be called sales persons. They are not giving advice based on what´s best for you. They are selling a product on behalf of their employer and they are earning a commission off what they sell you. What you actually need is not relevant in this equation. Eventually, you realize that your money has been poured into funds that charge hefty management fees even when they underperform the market, and a retirement plan packed with hidden costs that quietly shave thousands off your long-term gains. It adds up fast.

The real kicker? Most of these products promise expertise, but deliver average (or worse) results. A plain old index fund outperforms most actively managed ones over time. Robo-advisors do what humans do for a fraction of the cost. But those don’t come with steak dinners, branded tote bags, or the illusion of someone “guiding your future.” The finance industry is built on trust. But too often, that trust is a smokescreen for charging you extra to do what you could’ve done better (and cheaper) yourself. For readers looking to explore more transparent approaches to active trading, The website DayTrading offers detailed guides on strategies, platforms, and broker reviews.

Scams Disguised as Financial Products

In addition to questionable but technically lawful products, there are also plenty of financial scams out there, plus a plethora of activities hiding in legally gray areas. Binary options, poorly regulated forex brokers targeting inexperienced traders, shady crypto token launches, NFT “investments,” high-yield investment programs (HYIPs), and more. The list goes on.

Many of these scams don’t stay hidden in the shadows or in seedy back alleys. They advertise proudly online and offline. They sponsor influencers and athletes. They pay commissions to agents who are working hard to get you through the virtual door.

Often, there are a lot of similarities between the different scams. A flashy platform, easy onboarding, promises of big returns, and zero accountability when it all disappears. Whether it’s binary options, meme coins, or forex signals from a 22-year-old with a rented Lamborghini, the goal isn’t to help you build wealth. It’s to make sure you never see your money again. If something sounds too good to be true, assume you’re the exit strategy.

Short-Term Retail Binary Options

The binary options heavily marketed to inexperienced consumers are basically financial slot machines dressed in Wall Street lingo. You predict whether the price of an underlying asset (e.g. a stock) will go up or down in a very short time frame, sometimes just 30 seconds or 1 minute. It sounds simple, but the platform controls the price feed. If the so-called broker wants to, it can delay executions, manipulate expiry times, change the price feed, or simply just refuse withdrawals altogether. Financial regulators around the world have called them out for what they are: rigged systems masquerading as legitimate markets. Individuals who would never plunk down $200 on red at the roulette table will happily risk the same amount on a short-term binary option, because the platform has stroked their egos and made them feel like they are being “smart traders” who are so skilled and knowledgeable that they can foretell how a stock price will move during the coming 60 seconds.

Poorly Regulated Forex Brokers

Many of the poorly regulated forex brokers online come with the same risks as the shady binary options platforms, and this includes many of the well-known ones targeting beginners with flashy Instagram ads and fake influencer testimonials. Often, they lure people in with over-the-top data picked from demo accounts that make forex trading look safe and easy. Then, once you have deposited real money in your trading account, the spreads widen, trades slip, price feeds become wonky, and your balance evaporates. Alternatively, you make a profit, but then your withdrawal request gets stuck in processing and you are asked to provide an endless amount of evidence to prove your identity. Over time, support vanishes, and the terms of service can magically change overnight, freezing your account or removing your profits from it. Since the broker is not regulated by any of the strict financial authorities, you have to take your complaints to a tiny banana republic in the Pacific Ocean, where the broker has its name on a mailbox.

Blockchain Cryptocurrency

The world of blockchain-based cryptocurrency is another mess. For every legitimate project, there are at least a dozen scams. Many of them are just crypto-version of old financial scams, such as pump-and-dump and rug pull. Platforms can look very professional and promise enormous returns, only to collapse with no warning as the house of card comes tumbling down.

And NFTs? Many of these projects were never about art or exploring new technologies. They were about transferring money between insiders until the music stopped and the last buyer was left holding some code and a worthless JPEG.

What ties so many of these different scams together is the promise of quick money, backed by fake credibility, and fueled by our fear-of-missing-out. We have seen other people get rich from jumping on the crypto-train and we do not want to be left standing at the platform.

Credit Scores: A Modern Social Rating

In the United States, your credit score is supposed to, at least to a certain degree, be an objective measure of how “trustworthy” you are with money. In reality, it’s more like a digital scarlet letter, a number that follows you around, makes assumptions about your future based on your past, and rarely tells the whole story. Think of it as a financial GPA, except you don’t get to pick your classes, and the rules change halfway through the semester.

The score itself is built on a formula most people never see. Late payments, debt ratios, credit mix, length of credit history, etcetera. It sounds technical, but a lot of it boils down to timing and circumstance. Miss a payment because your paycheck landed a day late? That’s a ding. Close an old account because you don’t use it anymore? Another ding, even though you did nothing wrong. Take out a loan to deal with medical debt? You’re now high risk. Having no loans? You´re even higher risk.

And no, you don’t get extra points for picking an apartment with a reasonable rent or buying groceries with cash instead of using credit. The system isn’t designed to reward responsible living; it’s designed to reward the kind of behavior that makes lenders money. Borrow often, pay interest, avoid being too risky. That’s the playbook.

Worst of all? Your credit score can decide whether you get a job, rent an apartment, or even set up utilities. It’s not just financial, it’s social. A judgment call dressed up as a metric.

Miss one payment. Close a card. Be the victim of identity theft. Accidentally end up with a credit ratio that the algorithm deems unfavorable. These things don’t just affect you in the moment; they stick, and they can continue to stick for year. Bad credit doesn’t just lower an isolated score, it becomes part of your record, and getting it removed is intentionally hard and can take a very long time. Meanwhile, that information within your record haunts you. It raises your insurance premiums, increases your security deposits, blocks you from basic life decisions that would have helped to make your financed better. It’s a modern version of debtors’ prison, except now the walls are digital.

And even if you have never been late with a single payment in your entire life, you’re still in a system that rewards debt and punishes caution. You’re supposed to borrow to prove you can borrow more. You’re supposed to pay interest to be “creditworthy.” Try living without credit and the system calls you a ghost, deeming you unscorable, untouchable, invisible. That’s not accidental. That’s the trap. And it’s been baited so well for us.

The Dark Future of Fintech

Automated Decision Making

Fintech promised speed, fairness, and a cleaner break from old-school finance. But as it leans harder into automation, new issues are arising. When a software program decides who gets a loan, who gets flagged as risky, and who gets ghosted entirely, we like to think about it as clean and objective. It is not; it is just better hidden than when a human has to make an evaluation.

Most lending algorithms are trained on historical data that’s already full of bias. If certain zip codes have higher default rates, the model learns to mark them red. If people from lower-income neighborhoods were denied credit before, the algorithm thinks they should be denied again. It’s not racism with a hood, it’s racism with a spreadsheet. And the kicker? You can’t argue with it. There’s often no customer rep to reason with and no one to ask for a judgment call. You just get a “no” without explanation. The tech behind it isn’t evil in itself. But it learns from a flawed world, then quietly reinforces it under the banner of innovation.

Data as Currency: You Are the Product

Every fintech app you download, from your budget tracker and savings booster to that micro-investment tool, sells you control. What they don’t advertise is how much you’re giving up. Because once your data’s in their system, it stops being yours. Spending habits, income streams, transaction histories, this isn’t just data for budgeting. It’s behavioral gold. It is used to build profiles, target ads, sell you things you didn’t ask for, and maybe deny you things you did ask for. Ever get a suspiciously well-timed offer after paying off a card? That’s no accident.

Even your location and device data get scooped up and is used to predict patterns, detect “risk,” or justify variable pricing. Some banks now calculate “risk scores” based on non-financial behavior. Shopping at Walmart? Red flag. Using an iPhone? Green flag. It’s profiling dressed up as personalization.

You thought the app was helping you make money. Turns out, it’s helping someone else make money—off you.

DeFi Tied to Crypto

The combination of DeFi and cryptocurrency are often marketed as the antidote to may of our current problems. And it could be, at least partly. But in the rush to decentralize everything, a lot of the same greed just moved from banks to blockchains, and with even fewer rules, less oversight, less rule enforcement, and more room for fraud. Decentralized fin-tech is not inherently bad. But its future depends on who writes the code, who own the data, and who profits from the illusion of fairness. Because right now, the tools are getting smarter, but the traps are getting smarter, too.

The Psychological Warfare of Money

Money Shame and Class Anxiety

Money isn’t just math or a way to keep count. It’s wrapped up in complex human feelings around concepts such as identity, status, safety, and control. Most people don’t realize how much of their financial behavior is shaped by shame, guilt, and the pressure to fit into a class they can’t afford. And no, it’s not a personal failure. It’s baked into the culture and very strong forces are working to keep you in the maze.

You’re constantly being told you’re not saving enough, that you are not hustling hard enough, that you are not disciplined enough. When you are harmed by rising rents, stalled wages, and the price of eggs, it is somehow your fault for not being a better person. A smarter consumer. A harder worker. A more diligent investor.

You are constantly being hit by a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you don´t. You wear cheap clothes and feel judged, not just privately, but at that important job interview or networking event. You wear something more expensive, and you are labeled a frivolous person who should have put the money into a mutual fund instead. You skip the vacation and feel like a failure. You take the vacation and feel broke when you get home. There’s no winning because the goalposts are constantly moving. Shame is built into the business model.

Lifestyle Inflation as a Trap

Get a raise? Great. But somehow, the money never lasts. The apartment gets bigger. The meals get fancier. The Uber replaces the bus. And suddenly, you’re making double what you used to, but saving nothing. That’s lifestyle inflation. And it’s not just habit, it’s pressure. Friends start expecting more. You now have colleagues that notice your shoes. You start feeling like you’ve “earned” nicer things. And maybe you have, but if your costs rise every time your income does, you’re not growing wealth, you’re just upgrading your expenses.

What makes this dangerous is that it feels normal. No one questions it until something breaks. Then you realize how thin the margin really was. But by that point, cutting back feels like failure. Downsizing doesn’t just shrink your budget, it hits your pride and forces you to change your way of life.

I´m not advising you to never spend. I´m advising you to pay attention and notice the lifestyle creep, and make conscious decisions about it.

“Money Mindset” Gurus Selling False Hope

Scroll through your feed and you’ll find them: the hustle influencers, the motivational millionaires, the “self-made” success stories shouting that your mindset is the only thing standing between you and wealth. They say if you’re not rich yet, it’s because you don’t believe hard enough. That the universe rewards grind, positivity, risk taking, and vision boards. That anyone can break out of poverty with the right attitude, and if you haven’t, that’s on you. This is weaponized optimism. It turns systemic inequality into a self-help problem, and sells the fantasy that mindset alone is enough. Then they charge you $997 for the course. They are all self-made billionaires with Big Visions and borderline magic abilities, but they are, somehow, also really desperate to squeeze that $997 out of you.

Hustle culture pretends to empower. In reality, it often exploits burnout. Bootstrapping sounds noble until you realize most “self-made” millionaires started with safety nets they don’t talk about. There is a survivor bias, and toxic positivity shuts down real conversations about struggle, risk, and failure by labeling them “bad energy” or a “scarcity mindset”. You bring up a valid weakness with the plan? Someone will start talking about crabs in a bucket.

These gurus aren’t giving you the tools to build a future. They’re selling stories, ones that feel good to believe, but do nothing to change the reality you’re living in.

The Systemic Game: Who Really Wins?

Too Big to Fail, Too Small to Matter

Remember the crash of 2008? Banks took reckless bets and profited enormously for a while, then got bailed out with public funds when the gamble went bad. CEOs walked away with big bonuses. The tax payers footed the bills. Millions lost homes, jobs, savings, and were told it was just “the market correcting itself”. The real message? If you’re big enough, you’ll get rescued. If you’re not, you’re on your own.

This isn’t a one-time fluke. It’s a pattern. Look at airlines, banks, and auto manufacturers. They get safety nets. Meanwhile, mom-and-pop shops collapse if the rent increases. No one is willing to bail them out. Individuals face eviction, bankruptcy, and lifelong debt in situations that a big company would simply breeze through with a press release and a government check.

Risk is socialized. Profit is privatized. That’s the model. It’s not about merit or productivity. It’s about power: who has it, who doesn’t, and who’s disposable when things go sideways.

Global Finance and Exploitation

Look past Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and you’ll see how the financial system extracts wealth globally, especially from the places least able to resist. Developing nations don’t just suffer from poverty, they suffer from debt engineered in boardrooms half a world away. Loans from institutions like the IMF and World Bank come with strings attached: cut social programs, privatize public assets, open markets to foreign investors. What sounds like “reform” is often a long-term squeeze. Countries are forced to pay interest on loans that were supposed to help them grow, all while their resources get bought up cheap by multinationals.

Then there’s currency manipulation, offshore tax shelters, and capital flight. Local wealth is siphoned into global markets instead of staying in communities. It’s not just about corruption or a few bad policies here and there. It’s about an overall structure where the rich in one country profit from the instability of another country, all while calling it “development”.

Finance at a global level isn’t just about moving money. It’s about who gets to decide what value means and who pays when things go wrong. The answer, almost always, is the people least responsible and least protected. Because in this game, winning doesn’t just mean making a profit, it means getting a seat at the table where the rules are being written..

Tax Loopholes for the Rich, Audits for the Poor

In theory, taxes in a modern democracy are about fairness and about us working together for common goals. Everyone pays their share, society gets the services it needs, and the system runs. In practice, it’s a rigged game of hide-and-seek, where billionaires use private accountants and shell companies to disappear their money while the average person gets audited for claiming the wrong deduction.

The rich don’t evade taxes by accident. They do it legally, through trusts, carried interest, offshore entities, “real estate losses,” foundation loopholes, and good lawyers. The laws are written with enough wiggle room to drive a yacht through. And most of them weren’t created in the shadows, they were lobbied for in plain sight, by people who had the money to shape the rules in their favor.

Meanwhile, everyday workers get scrutinized. In the United States, the IRS audits lower-income filers claiming tax credits more often than billionaires with complex returns. Why? For a variety of reason, including how it is cheaper, faster, and more likely to result in revenue. It’s not about justice, it’s about efficiency. If you’re rich enough to fight back, you’re left alone. If you’re not, you’re lunch.

A notable example is the Panama Papers leak, where 11.5 million documents (2.6 terabytes of data) from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca was leaked and revealed how numerous individuals, companies and organizations around the world was using offshore companies and tax havens to hide assets, launder money, and evade taxes. In addition to our normal garden-variety criminals, the documents pointed to a plethora of high-profile politicians, celebrities, and business persons. The information became public in 2016. At the time of writing, in 2025, the leak has still only resulted in very few jail sentences, and for most of those, the convicted person never actually served any jail time.

Only two individuals have actually served jail time as a direct result of the leaked information: Rodrigo Rato and Nawaz Sharif. In both cases, they spent a fairly short time in jail in comparison to the actual sentence.

Rodrigo Rato

Rodrigo Rato is a prominent figure in Spanish politics and finance. He served in key government roles in 1996-2004, including Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, Minister of Economy and Finance, and Second Deputy Prime Minister. He was the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2004–2007, and President of Bankia in 2010-2012. It was Rato who presided over the merger of Caja Madrid and other savings institutions into Bankia, whose disastrous initial public offering in 2011 contributed to Spain’s financial instability.

In 2018, Rato was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for embezzlement and fraud related to the misuse of “black cards” during his time at Bankia. The cases resulted from information in the Panama Papers.

Rato entered prison on October 25, 2018. He was eventually granted parole, and was released on February 19, 2020, after serving less than 1 year and 4 months of his 4.5 year long prison sentence. Under normal circumstances, prisoners in Spain are not eligible for parole before serving at least two-thirds of their prison sentence, which in Rato´s case would have been 3 years.

After his release from prison, Rato seemingly worked hard to rehabilitate his personal image, spending time with philanthropic activities such as volunteering at the Ave María soup kitchen in Madrid, alongside the catholic priest Father Paulino whom he had befriended during his stint in prison.

Rato made his public return at an event during the III Congreso Nacional de la Sociedad Civil in April 2023, participating in a panel discussing the U.S.-Chinese relationship and its implications for Spain and Europe. The following month, his memoir titled “Hasta aquí hemos llegado” (So Far We Have Come) was published by Ediciones Península.

In December 2024, Rato was convicted by the Madrid Provincial Court of tax fraud, money laundering, and corruption, but this case was not based on the Panama Paper leak. Rato received a sentence of 4 years, 9 months, and 1 day. He has appealed and is not required to begin serving time until the appeal is resolved.

Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif is a prominent Pakistani politician and businessman who has served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan three times (1990–1993, 1997–1999, 2013–2017 ), and is the owner of the

large industrial conglomerate Ittefaq Group.

In 2017, Sharif resigned from his position as Prime Minster in the wake of the Panama Papers leak. On July 6, 2018, he was convicted of corruption and failure to explain ownership, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was arrested on July 13, as he returned to Pakistan from England. Until September 19, he was imprisoned in Adiala Jail. On September 19, he was released on bail, after roughly 2 months of imprisonment.

In December 2018, he was sentenced in another case (also tied to the Panama Papers). For his ownership of Al-Azizia Steel Mills in Saudi Arabia without a declared legal money trail, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison. He was arrested after the verdict, and served about 10 months in Kot Lakhpat Jail, in December 2018 – October 2019. On October 29, he was granted medical bail due to health issues and in November he left for treatment in England.

In summary, he was sentenced to 10 years + 7 years in prison, but only spent circa 2 months + 10 months in prison.

After nearly 4 years abroad, Sharif returned to Pakistan in October 2023, having secured protective bail. Notably, his younger brother Shehbaz Sharif served as Prime Minister of Pakistan in 2022-2023. After the return of Nawaz Sharif in late 2023, many of the convictions were overturned or dropped by courts, just ahead of the Pakistan general elections which were held in February 2024. The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) emerged as the largest individual party, and formed a coalition government with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), ensuring that Shehbaz Sharif could remain as prime minister. Sharif Nawaz once again became a Member of the National Assembly, and he was re-elected to the role of President of PML-N in May 2024.

So… What Can We Do?

Awareness Is Power

The first defense against a rigged system is clarity. You don’t need to become a financial wizard. You just need to start noticing who benefits when you’re confused, rushed, or compliant. Scan every “offer” like it’s trying to trap you, because many are. That free credit card with a bonus? It’s counting on you missing a payment. That “personalized” loan rate? Might be based on a profile built from your clicks. That glossy investment app? It might be steering you toward the mutual funds that pay them, not you.

Pay attention to the timing of charges, how terms are worded, what buttons are bigger or bolder. A few good habits, like reading full emails from your bank, checking your statements once a week, and freezing your credit unless you’re using it, can block a lot of nonsense before it even starts. It’s not about being paranoid. It’s about being conscious in a game built to run on your inattention.

Ask Better Questions, Not Just for Better Rates

Banks, lenders, and so-called advisors all count on you asking for deals, not asking for truth.

• Instead of “What’s your lowest rate?” ask “How do you make money off this product?”
• Instead of “Should I invest in this?” ask “How do you profit from me making this investment?”
• Push past the sales pitch. Ask what happens if you can’t make payments. Ask what happens if the market tanks. And if the answers feel slippery, that’s your answer too.

You’re not just a customer. You’re their paycheck. So act like it. If they talk down to you, find someone else. If they dodge a straight answer, write it down and circle back. You don’t need to understand every acronym and buzzword, but you do need to understand when you’re being dazzled.

Learning Finance Doesn’t Mean Playing Their Game

You don’t have to become a lover of the stock market or start flipping real estate to “get” finance. The idea that knowing about finance is for finance bros only is a myth that keep a lot of individuals in the dark. They have been sold on the concept, that if they are critical about Wall Street and dislike hedge funds, the best course of action is to study French literature and refuse to learning anything about finance.

In reality, learning about money can mean learning how not to get dragged into bad deals. It can mean figuring out how to live with less pressure. It can help make you better at recognizing a bad loan and walk away. It’s knowing when to rent, not buy. It’s skipping the FOMO-fueled side hustle because you understand opportunity cost better than the guy screaming at you on YouTube. For accessible investing insights and practical education tailored to everyday readers, Investing.co.uk is a useful resource to bridge that gap without the jargon.

Finance doesn’t have to be your thing, but it is smart to know at least the basics, since you do live in this world with the rest of us.