Great Britain's 800 billion dollar bank bailout

Turgon

400 billion pounds. All agreed around a table at 10 Downing Street last night without any of the House of Representative stuff.

400,000,000,000.00 GBP

=

692,549,168,178.29 USD

United Kingdom Pounds United States Dollars
1 GBP = 1.73137 USD 1 USD = 0.577576 GBP

Claymoore

We can't even be number one in bank bailouts? First there were the math and science test scores, and now this.

It's a sad day for America...

nel

Im very suprised with this to be honest

I cant see many other nations doing this especially those in the poxy EU.

Turgon

Claymoore wrote:

We can't even be number one in bank bailouts? First there were the math and science test scores, and now this.

It's a sad day for America...

I don't think its anything to be proud of. Actually my maths is off. I figured it was 800 billion dollars because the currency was 2 for 1 a few months back. With the present exchange rate its on a par with the US bailout.

It comes with strings attached for the banks. It's a partial nationalisation of the 8 biggest British banks with taxpayers getting a stake in the bank. We will have to borrow heavily from foreign countries to bankroll this and I imagine taxes for all of us will rise as a consequence.

Pash

Ohh great, so my hard earned money will be used to bail out greedy banks who have actually contributed to spiralling consumer debts. The shareholders and directors of these banks should be named and shamed, if I have a stake in these banks I wanna know who to aim my tomatoes at!

Ahriakin

nel wrote:

Im very suprised with this to be honest

I cant see many other nations doing this especially those in the poxy EU.

Ireland guaranteed up to e480 billion, or every Euro on deposit with the major banks . I hear from the folks at home that the rest of Europe is pissed as a huge portion of Europes investments 'surprisingly' moved to their after the announcement.

It's all smoke and mirrors though. We let the credit institutions leverage many times their actual capital and in essences created virtual money, now the curtains have been pulled back.

Turgon

It's gone up to 500 billion pounds or 860 billion dollars.

500,000,000,000.00 GBP

=

860,473,316,964.01 USD

undomiel

It looks like the insanity is contagious.

Kaminsky

It's only about a third of the gdp but still a huge chunk and yet the market has still gone down two days in a row since. It is designed to gurentee banks lending to each other with is the major problem gumming up the works apparantly.

There are very big strings attached like no bonuses, etc. Apparantly most of the money will get paid back in time but what I would like to know is a) where in the hell did it come from and b) what are we going to have to go without ?

Ireland's decision seems to have made things a lot worse by gurenteeing all savings which has caused a flood of savers to move their money out of UK banks and into Ireland's so compounding the problem.

The other issue over here this week has been the Iceland banks which were government recomended to our councils, authorities charities, etc who invested millions and when the iceland banks went belly up, all that money got frozen but Iceland nationals are covered. UK responded in kind by using society protection laws do do the same with icelands assetts over here. Unfortunately the laws were entitled "Anti Terrorism ..... " or something like that.

The knock on effects of that is that our local taxes (Council Tax) could rise and rise by a lot.


One thing that has bugged me is the greedy utility companies a short time ago hiking up their prices and hiked them up again across the board due to "high oil prices" and now that the price of oil is now down to what it was before the recent huge price increase, the utility companies are keeping to the hiked prices and hoping nobody will notice. Seems today, the Prime Minsiter has called them on it..

Must say, the PM has been very very low on the opinion poll of late now there is a charismatic opposition leader in the frame but, I am quite impressed with all the things the government has been doing to try and fend off this crisis and try and keep it only to a recession rather than let it fall head long into a depresion. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating though.

Turgon

Kaminsky wrote:

It's only about a third of the gdp but still a huge chunk and yet the market has still gone down two days in a row since. It is designed to gurentee banks lending to each other with is the major problem gumming up the works apparantly.

There are very big strings attached like no bonuses, etc. Apparantly most of the money will get paid back in time but what I would like to know is a) where in the hell did it come from and b) what are we going to have to go without ?

Ireland's decision seems to have made things a lot worse by gurenteeing all savings which has caused a flood of savers to move their money out of UK banks and into Ireland's so compounding the problem.

The other issue over here this week has been the Iceland banks which were government recomended to our councils, authorities charities, etc who invested millions and when the iceland banks went belly up, all that money got frozen but Iceland nationals are covered. UK responded in kind by using society protection laws do do the same with icelands assetts over here. Unfortunately the laws were entitled "Anti Terrorism ..... " or something like that.

The knock on effects of that is that our local taxes (Council Tax) could rise and rise by a lot.


One thing that has bugged me is the greedy utility companies a short time ago hiking up their prices and hiked them up again across the board due to "high oil prices" and now that the price of oil is now down to what it was before the recent huge price increase, the utility companies are keeping to the hiked prices and hoping nobody will notice. Seems today, the Prime Minsiter has called them on it..

Must say, the PM has been very very low on the opinion poll of late now there is a charismatic opposition leader in the frame but, I am quite impressed with all the things the government has been doing to try and fend off this crisis and try and keep it only to a recession rather than let it fall head long into a depresion. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating though.

The money is borrowed from foriegn countries. A range of them of course but mostly China, the Middle East and Russia. Housing boom, wars, consumerism. It's all cost a horrendous amount in loans. US 2008 military budget is 150 billion more than the rest of the world combined according to one study I saw. US = 600 billion. Rest of the world combined = 500 billion. Unsustainable.

The Chinese loans are interesting.

Money borrowed from China to buy more goods made..in China. Global warming? Check out google earth and the container barges on the Suez Canal. Check out Singapore the World's busiest container port. That's the stuff we buy with foreign loans shipped half way around the world, not to mention all the raw materials heading to the far east to make the stuff.

jbaello

China is the new sherieff in town, they'll overtake Taiwan by forceand the US will not be able to do squat about it and just watch them.