Wednesday 1 October 2008

Not Again and Not Enough

When Labour heartlands cheap loans to unqualified borrowers to establish the client-base bank, Northern Rock, failed the retail run was wholly understandable. No-one wants to lose control of their money while the clerks of a failing bank facing the sack process claims that keep them in work. That the 'guarantee' for deposits covered only £35,000, and not even that in full, was discouraging too. So after publishing figures showing that more than 90% of savings would be covered by a £50,000 guarantee, such a guarantee was promised by Brown. Of course it hasn't materialised. Brown's promises are invariably dishonest and unfulfilled unless they involve taking more of our money from us.

Again the £50,000 savings security promise is being renewed. Not implemented, just proffered again. Which is bad enough, but there is a wholly different confidence problem faced by depositors. It is the pretence that what is being talked about are 'savings'.

Most people haven't got £50,000 worth of savings unless they are coming to the end of their economically active lives, and even then they are scarcer than they should be. What many have is quite large sums of money passing through their bank accounts on their way elsewhere. Inheritances, cash realisations for big purchases, temporary resting places for transactions that require cash. Then sums can be much higher, once in a lifetime sums, than £50,000. (Yes, there are formal economics recastings of this but there is, too, the real world of people with their parent's life's effort or the specific object of years' of sacrifice about to come to fruition).

The old advice 'never get caught in a city in a sack' applies to United Kingdom banks.

Never get caught using a UK bank for anything but small sums until there is a 100% reimbursement guarantee over no time at all. Use Irish banks, or eurozone banks so infinitely less-exposed than Brown's crippled financial system.

And never trust any promise offered by Brown, ever.

4 comments:

Old BE said...

Interesting isn't it! The Irish banks are now going to market themselves in the UK as being "safe" and watch people flock over to them.

The government guarantee should operate like the US one in that the money becomes accessible instantly - perhaps overseen by the Bank of England.

hatfield girl said...

Economists talk about things that bring down people's lives in a foreign language. Among other things, they equate activities that at a social (and political and moral level) are very different.

Apart from that though, the Brown regime, and Brown himself, specifically, as he always wants to be the bringer of good news, are guilty of promising and never delivering. Child poverty end, no.
£50,000 compensation for retail deposits in bankrupt banks, no. (not even £30,000, people are now aware its a long wait, and some of that money is for surgery or medical treatments for which the NHS will allow death to intervene).

The Bank of England? Do you have any faith in any institution of the UK state any longer? Blair/Brown's New Labour has trashed everything.

Sorry, Blue, when even Newmania gives up on the Conservative rescue, where are we?

Newmania said...

Sorry, Blue, when even Newmania gives up on the Conservative rescue, where are we?

When did I do that ?.My view is that this all areflection of too much money in the global economy and that the correction will have to come somehow .
I am highly tempted by the idea of letting the strong survive and i see Geoff Randall agrees today

hatfield girl said...

Your first post on 29 September, N.