Stephen Booth

It is shameful and disgraceful that part of the Bradford and Bingley is to be sold off to the Spanish Santander Group.

Why do Gordon Brown and Yvette Cooper etc think that the Spanish economy is capable of rescuing them? Surely it will be just as shaky as anywhere else, perhaps more so.

Labour Party - bargain basement sales of your financial world to foreign companies.

Are these bank collapses something like the old Domino Theory, where one falling down knocks over the others. How many more banks have to fold before the government runs out of money? Is the world economy in complete meltdown?

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

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Millennium3

Unchartered waters -I guess everyone is just waiting and hoping.

Wowbanger TIP

First of all forget "British" and "Spanish" banks. Banks have no allegiance to anything other than money, if someone wanted to grind up your kids for biscuits, and there was money in it, every bank in the world would advance them the capital at interest.

These banks are not owned by nations, their shares are held by multinational agglomerations of wedge which know no borders. The only sense in which they can be said to belong to any nation is the primary nationality of the victims on their debt farms and the government whose tax system they evade.

Is the metaphor of the "domino theory" appropriate?

To some extent. However that suggests that one collapse started the chain reaction. This is not the case, rather the financial institutions of the world were all struck by the same phenomenon, the credit crunch, at the same time. Imagine a table full of set up dominoes in an Earthquake. The least stable collapsed early on (Northern Rock, Bear Stearns) and their collapse weakened the "dominoes" still standing (through general loss of confidence more than direct losses through investments in those institutions). However all the dominoes, even if not within range of another, would/will fall if the Earthquake carries on. It is carrying on and its getting worse.

The truly terrifying thing is that not all the dominoes represent banks and financial institutions, some are governments which are in one sense financial entities just like banks. If that were not bad enough there is a very real risk that some people might quite like to tip a few dominoes over, the sovereign wealth funds of countries like China, Russia and the Gulf States all of which could flick a dominoe or twenty if they were prepared to sacrifice their dollars. If the US had devalued the dollar by bailing out the banks this would have been less of a sacrifice, maybe a thought which occurred to some American politicans....

An equivalent metaphor might be a nuclear chain reaction. Giving a 3D image and a more random and powerful process as well as a satisfyingly graphic allusion of just how much trouble we are in.

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The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.

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Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Little Englander (sour)

If, as Wowbanger suggests, you forget the "British" and "Spanish" prefix to banks you will also have to work out what will happen if the "Spanish" bank gets into further and deeper trouble, I suppose the "Spanish" bank owners will shed "Spanish" jobs and outlets before they shed "British" jobs and outlets - won'they?

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Little Englander (bigoted)

Wowbanger TIP

They will close whichever makes least money.

__________________
The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.

H S Thompson

Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Millennium3

Tesco's bank is becoming very popular - I suppose people don't associate sub prime mortgages with them.

John Connor

Therefore, whichever is lending less.

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Stephen Booth

Does the collapse of the Iceland Banks and the no compensation for British account holders spell the end of the 'single market'? In this time, perhaps it would be a good message for UKIP to spell out the perils of people putting their money into foreign banks. So to go back to the head of this thread, if the money from Bradford and Bingley which Gordon Brown has put into Santander is put at risk when the Spanish banks go bust, who will bail out Gordon?

It seems that around 20 councils have depositied money with Iceland.

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Little Englander (sour)

Stand-by for the World single currency.

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allanon

To be named the Yuan, apparently.