quote:
Originally posted by Ovacikpeedoff
Unfortunately leaving the banks go to the wall would have resulted in millions of ordinary working people losing their savings as well as the shareholders losing their investments.
I'm not certain about this, perhaps you could explain a bit more.
I was under the impression that in 2008 the UK Government guaranteed 100% of the value of the first £2000 of bank deposits and 90% of the value of the next £33000. Above £35000 you would have lost all your savings unless you had wisely decided to open a saving account with a different bank for savings over £35k. The new Labour Government's first reaction to the banking collapse was to increase the level of guarantee to £50k and the coverage to 100% (something for which I think they should have been given more appreciation than they were). So no
personal saver would have lost all their savings and even those with more than £50k would have been OK if they they split it between banks.
If the banks had been allowed to go bankrupt HMG would have had to shell out huge sums of money but - as a guess - this could well have been much less than the bank bailout cost. But perhaps I am misreading the situation in 2008.