The Credit Crisis in Britain
Following yesterday’s Post on this Blog about Goldman Sachs, here’s Britain in action.
Ministers yesterday (17th November) launched a £50 billion ($84 billion) bailout of Britain’s crippled banks – and warned there could be worse to come. State-controlled lenders Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group will receive fresh injections of taxpayers’ money totalling £39 billion ($65.5 billion).
RBS – which has now received the biggest state rescue anywhere in the world – was also handed £11 billion ($18.5 billion) in tax breaks to help keep it afloat.
Source: The Daily Mail
Thanks for the Greed. Are the directors responsible still in place? Are the Great and Good who removed controls and oversaw the decade of binge-spending and easy credit still in place?
Oh, I remember now. The very same person in Britain who was Chancellor throughout the 90s and is now Prime Minister is – according to John Prescott (former Labour Deputy-Leader and the person whose office sign was changed at a cost of £700 ($1,200) when his job name was rebadged weeks before he left it anyway) – a “Global Giant” who saved the world.
Oh, and let’s not forget, this is the same person who said that: “Britain is better placed than other countries in Europe to weather the crisis …..etc blah, blah, blah …”
The reality (which is in fairly short supply among Global Giants) is different:
Within hours of the Chancellor’s announcement, the European Commission issued a stark warning about the frayed state of Britain’s national finances, warning of an ‘extraordinary deterioration’ because of the cost of City rescues.
It estimates public debt will double as a share of the economy between 2007 and 2011, reaching 88 per cent of gross domestic product – the biggest rise of any leading EU economy.
The latest £50billion bank bailout is roughly equivalent to the annual schools budget and far exceeds the annual defence budget of £35billion. The new moves bring the total of public money lavished on Britain’s financial rescue to £1.2trillion – almost £20,000 for every man, woman and child living in the country.
… and the £ has sunk drastically against the euro ….
Still, let’s have a bit of positive spin …. the National Debt isn’t quite (yet) what is was just after WWII. A great achievement. Well done Gordon Brown …. but you can do it …. just one more little push.
We could do with fewer spin-ridden “Global Giants” and more people with vision, courage and competence.
And rather than “saving the world” it might be nicer if Gordon Brown started with saving Britain.
By Chris Snuggs
Learning from Dogs 
Some major European have had debts above 80% for a long time. The USA and France are about there. What matters is not so much the debt.
A little bit of inflation would be just what the doctor ordered, to solve the debt, and several other things.
The real problem is that there are no solution looking forward, to prevent a continuation of the scandalous, anti-democratic situation in finance.
In first order, a tiny tax on any single financial transaction ought to be imposed: that will prevent the financial sector to be as self referential as it is now. It would also help the debt.
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Ths stock market should exist to finance industrial investment and growth. Like so much else, it is abused and has become a giant casino.
A tiny tax on transactions? Why not. And – sadly – a tiny tax on e-mails might stop the SPAM. But why not also make it illegal to own shares for less than a fixed period. This would stop the instant buying and selling that is done by speculators who have no interest in industrial finance, only in self-enrichment.
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