R2OK! Forum Index R2OK!
Contact R2OK! admin

Click here for R2OK! Website


 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Millions Ploughed Into Banks.

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    R2OK! Forum Index -> News and Current Affairs
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
mark occomore



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 9955
Location: UK

PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 5:00 am    Post subject: Millions Ploughed Into Banks. Reply with quote

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7658277.stm

__________________________

This is very risky.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SantaFefan



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 11258
Location: top of the cliffs in Norfolk

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 12:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This situation is simply amazing...

The UK taxpayer has to fork out cash to prop up the Banks in an attempt to soothe these mysterious people somewhere who are "nervous". poor things.
What about the poor sods who were nervous of losing their homes because of the banks?
Wasn't it recently that Barclays announced some of their biggest profits? how about putting some of that cash back into the Bank?

I don't even register on the scale of understanding these things but it's all starting to get on my nerves. Funny how the government can come up with this amount of cash all of a sudden.

Should the UK taxpayer have to pay those individuals who invested in the Icelandic banks? they took the risk didn't they. Unfortunate yes, but why should I have to cough up to cover their loss.
I'd rather see the government ensuring the energy companies are British owned!!

My Norwich Union shares have gone down.. maybe the government will make it up to me too. Evil or Very Mad
_________________
Johnnie Walker read out my message on Pirate Radio! Very Happy 13/8/07
I have heard how radio should be.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
mark occomore



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 9955
Location: UK

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think Bonuses should be held back from the big wigs at the banks. They have got Tax Payers money to keep them a float.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SantaFefan



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 11258
Location: top of the cliffs in Norfolk

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Too true. Well, now I'm a share holder in Barclays, perhaps I'll be allowed to vote on that. Razz

I had a meeting with our Corporate Manager at Barclays last week. He assured me there would be no problems at all concerning our proposals to extend and the loan involved to cover it.
Maybe I should be "nervous" about borrowing and voice my lack of confidence in the Bank.
I might get a better deal?? more likely it'll be a cuddle from the Bank Manager! Laughing
_________________
Johnnie Walker read out my message on Pirate Radio! Very Happy 13/8/07
I have heard how radio should be.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
gfloyd



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 4861
Location: Here, There, Everywhere.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Barclays & HSBC are probably the two most solvent banks in the UK. It was RBS, Northern Rock, B&B and a few others that took on all the crazy loans.
_________________
His name was ernie ........ and he drove the fastest milk cart in the west.....
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mark occomore



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 9955
Location: UK

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The country will go ballistic if any top brass at these banks gets Bonuses. I'm sure with the pressure they will hold back?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
iknewdavidjacobsmum



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 336

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 8:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Of course there won't be bonuses this year, or maybe next. But when it's all died down the Chief Execs will just get even huger ones, as the public will have forgotten this ever happened!
Anyone remember the 16% Mortgage interest in the 80's? Most won't, as it's gone away.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SantaFefan



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 11258
Location: top of the cliffs in Norfolk

PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

spookily enough, I recently found the agreement form for my first ever Bank loan from Lloyds to purchase a house ( a business loan, as it was a commercial property ) and it was 17.5% I think! Shocked that was about 1980 or maybe 81.
High repayment costs but lowish bills and Council Tax back then ( or was it Rates? )
Now we have lowish repayment costs and sky high Bills and Council Tax!
Swings and roundabouts.... Laughing Sad
_________________
Johnnie Walker read out my message on Pirate Radio! Very Happy 13/8/07
I have heard how radio should be.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
RockitRon



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 7646

PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nineteen years ago Base Rate was 15%.

Just about the only saving grace from the current stramash is that it's less than a third of that, or else people would be living outside in tents.

It is incredible, isn't it, that our banks, which last year made upwards of £3bn in profit, should find themselves so strapped that they have to go around with a begging bowl. They are still highly profitable - at least, they are obliged to inform the City if they're not, and none of them has done so, so far.

The problem has been caused by the complete shutdown of the banks' own lending club. Because a lot of their lending is by overdraft their day-to-day funding requirements vary enormously, depending on customers' usage of their facilities, and they have historically lent to one another as required to cover the peaks of this usage. In effect they have been lending (or have a contingent lending commitment which is) rather more than the deposits they hold. If it was one of their business customers we were talking about, they would say they were overtrading (and I wish I had a fiver for every set of accounts I analysed for lending propositions in the 1980s/90s which displayed that) and refuse to lend them any money. Because bankers have usually trusted one another they have looked the other way, until they started to take the huge hits from losses on the toxic, sub-prime loans they bought from the US. Now there is a real danger that if one bank lends to another some money it doesn't need now but might do tomorrow it might not get it back, in which case it too is snookered. So they are all hoarding what cash they have got and are refusing to reopen this form of liquidity, preferring that someone else (the Government, the Treasury, Us) do so and take the risk.

The market reaction to the UK and US Governments' so-called bail-out packages seems to have been that they don't think they're enough. The banks themselves don't think much of them, or the strings attached, because they (HSBC and Barclays anyway) are trying to raise the capital they require in other ways.

However, things are getting to look scary, with the N for Nationalisation word being banded about, and we can do nothing but look on in horror.

SF, you're obviously a pretty good customer of your Bank, especially if you actually get to see your Corporate Manager, and I've no doubt you will get your loan (I'm sure you'll check your facility letter/Agreement for any sneaky rise in fees/rates or tightening of conditions), but ultimately it may be Darlings Bank you are repaying.
_________________
Ron
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mark occomore



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 9955
Location: UK

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought it was happening, but looks like it's really happening? errrr
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
RockitRon



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 7646

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, here we are, not that you can avoid it on the news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7666570.stm

Barclays' shareholders will be heaving an even greater sigh of relief that it lost out in the battle to take over ABN last year, but will be less than amused at losing their dividend next year (I did think it odd that they raised only £4bn in a rights issue earlier this year - precisely the amount the divi costs them).
_________________
Ron
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Rachel
Guest





PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't understand banks, finances and all that stuff but I had a dream last night about lots of tall buildings falling down around me - I had to run through a tunnel to escape the falling bricks, then I was rescued by a cow and a horse at the other end. That doesn't bode well.
Back to top
mark occomore



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 9955
Location: UK

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Top brass at two of the banks involved have gone. I bet with big payouts and pensions? The Government have said " They may put some of their people on the banks boards to watch them"

Basically we now own some stakes in these banks.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SantaFefan



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 11258
Location: top of the cliffs in Norfolk

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'll sell you my stake for a ton... all right, a monkey... Smile
_________________
Johnnie Walker read out my message on Pirate Radio! Very Happy 13/8/07
I have heard how radio should be.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
mark occomore



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 9955
Location: UK

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SantaFefan wrote:
I'll sell you my stake for a ton... all right, a monkey... Smile


We might have to buy shares? Government bonded ones. Laughing
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
iknewdavidjacobsmum



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 336

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting thing re Banks happened to me today. Had to do some transactions at HSBC. I was told that had to use the Counter facilities as the paying in ATM's weren't working. After queuing for over 30 minutes (well it was the middle of the day), job done. Then heard that HSBC's internet banking had been on the blink all over the weekend.
I wonder how many people that spooked out?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
RockitRon



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 7646

PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rachel wrote:
I don't understand banks, finances and all that stuff


For the last twenty years you haven't needed to, to be chief exec of one. Fred "the Shred" Goodwin, Bob Diamond, Matt Barratt, Andy Hornby - they're all deal-makers and lemon squeezers, far removed from the business end of banking and finance (actually Barratt was a banker, but didn't behave much like one when he was at Barclays).

Much was made in the news last night of the banks returning to traditional lending values and principles. I thought I'd cast my mind back and remind myself how that was...

* If you wanted a mortgage to buy a house you had to go to a building society. Banks were only freed to do it in the 1980s, and even then there was a quota system, and you could only borrow up to 80% of the value of the house.

* All cheque accounts were charged a fee according to usage.

* Applications for credit cards and unsecured loans required a full Budget form to be completed, and credit limits were confined to about one month's salary. (When my son started work two years ago, he opened a bank account and within three months was sanctioned a credit card with a limit that was eight times his.)

* There was no unsecured lending allowed for consolidation of debts, or intangibles like holidays.

* If a business wanted to borrow more than the cuddly branch manager could sanction within his discretion, balances sheets, budgets, plans and forecasts would be picked over with a fine toothcomb by a regional team of number-crunchers. Assuming it was sanctioned the facility would be so tightly monitored they'd send the Inquisition round if you were a day late with management figures.

I don't think we're likely to turn the clock back quite as far, but you can see just how tightly controlled things used to be. What should come to an end is all the highly-leveraged financing of large corporate takeovers and management buyouts, and banks falling over themselves to lend to world-famous names and brands just for the sake of market share and good publicity.
_________________
Ron
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
iknewdavidjacobsmum



Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 336

PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do agree with you Ron,
I would add:
100% plus mortgages were originally designed for people who knew their income would double soon, i.e. about to qualify as Doctors, Accountants etc who had already put in years of studying, which I thought was quite a reasonable idea. Then it was extended to all.
Madness.
My nephew opened a bank account with me as the Guarantor and received a credit card without any application (cut it up I hasten to add). I remember when you had to have a reference from your employer even to be considered!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    R2OK! Forum Index -> News and Current Affairs All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © phpBB Group. Hosted by phpBB.BizHat.com