Well, it was taken over by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1985. But in Willy Glyn's' day, this would never have happened. Loose lending brought the banks here, spurred on by loose policy as in the Barber Boom of the 1970s, the Lawson Boom of the 1980s and the Brown Boom of, well, it seems to have been going on for ever. RBS is currently worth £4.5b but has received £32b from the taxpayer. Let it burn. Whatever the political consensus and whatever economists may think, people no longer want to spend, and throwing money at banks (which in any case no longer want to lend), won't change that. The only thing that will is a general recovery of confidence, and that won't happen until there is an election. Acceptance of the coming austerity is here, it is simply a matter of when it will be implemented.
The only question that remains to be answered is what happened to all the money advanced by these idiotic banks to the idiotic customers who remortgaged and remortgaged because everyone told them their houses had been transformed into bottomless cash machines? Has it really gone on home-delivered pizza and nearly-new Audis for the upper-working/lower-middle classes? Is there nothing else to show for it?
Trust only the bank of the biscuit tin.
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Well said that man!
ReplyDeleteOnly taking into account the £32bn (or "boullions" as that fat, one-eyed lunatic would say) that's gone to RBS, and assuming that 32 million people are/were in employment; that would be £1000 per person to pay off some of their debts.
If shared out unequally in percentages according to how much shite you're in, while being unfair on those who have no debt, it would go even further to solving the circle of debt problem.
And that's just the RBS money.
Maybe I iz bein too simplistik, innit? (Don't know where that came from. Time for the med).