Crunch time

October 1, 2008

wall street“Gordon Brown promised last night that the Government would ‘roll up its sleeves’ and sort out the banking system.”

“Gordon Brown was personally fighting to save the proposed £12 billion rescue of Britain’s biggest savings bank last night amid growing doubts over the deal.”

A fair collection of hollow cries. The scary thing is that it’s happening world wide. In Holland “Fortis Bank” - a conglomerate of Belgium and Dutch origin - nearly went to the dogs, only saved by a massive 12 billion Euro’s nationalization effort by the governments of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

In the US a 700 billion dollar (!) rescue plan was voted down, forcing good ol’ George to make four pleas on television to the American people within one week for their support.

I wonder where all this money is coming from? Does Gordon Brown just call Alistair Darling?

“Erm… ah…. by the way Alistair, be a good lad and turn on the presses tonight and cram out another 20 billion pounds… we’ve got another one falling over…”

“Ah… oh…. you’re still busy with that 50 billion from last week. Hmmm… well… erm… yes… maybe we should buy some Irish banks…. hmmm… yes…. they seem to guarantee customer accounts up to 100%…. hmmm… yes…. ah….”

Should we be worried? Will the system completely collapse?

Posted by roger | Filed Under Blog 

Comments

2 Responses to “Crunch time”

  1. val on October 1st, 2008 22:22

    Yes, well, in the (ahem) old days, you put your spare money if there was any into the bank and then you gained some interest. Also, you were actively stopped from taking a mortgage unless it was a near certaintly that you could afford it. No-one had ever heard of a bank borrowing from another bank! ‘Your’ bank was all you needed. I think we should be very worried for the next couple of years or so. Hopefully it will all come right but with fat cats taking humungous bonuses, fuel prices rising out of all proportion, the falling housing market, and an unstable financial market, I reckon no-one can accuratey predict the future of our/world economy. Once again, ‘under the mattress’ feels like a pretty good saving place for our savings.

  2. Joost on October 4th, 2008 4:04

    I think this is THE opportunity to buy the US economy. Most banks should be for sale now. That way we have the US by the balls. If they ever think of invading another country again, we just say : “Eh … NO !!, Not with OUR money”.

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