Iceland

Nervous_Norvus

edwinac wrote: »

According to reports this weekend, Wachovia Corp., the giant North Carolina-based bank holding company, could be the next big bank to fail.
.....
I wonder how exposed the joint venture with Wachovia has left Landsbanki to those bad loans?

According to Ceefax, Citigroup has taken over Wachovia.

holloholloway

I have a lot of money in icesave and it's in a 2 year fixed rate account. All this talk of bankruptcy is affecting my sleep. I am not sleeping properly as i am worried i will lose my hard earned money. How stupid i was for putting so much money in there and now i can't take it out. Does anyone think it will stay solvent and not go under. Everyone seems to be panicking like myself but there could be a run on icesave like there was on northern rock.Can someone allay my fears a little.

Mr_Mumble

holloholloway, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme protects the first £35,000 and this should be increased to £50,000 soon.

Things would have to get really bad for money above the FSCS limits to be in danger. Iceland has agreements with Nordic (Norway, Sweden, Finland) countries to collaborate in the event of a financial disaster, it is a member of the European Economic Area so there is a fair chance other large European countries would help out, including the UK given the size of deposits held by British citizens.

edwinac_2

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

holloholloway, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme protects the first £35,000 and this should be increased to £50,000 soon.

The FSCS just admitted they have no cash to give out! In the case of the B&B, the Government had to lend the FSCS the money to give to the depositors. That's okay until next time, but what then?

Things would have to get really bad for money above the FSCS limits to be in danger.

Things ARE really bad!

The Fortis bank which just collapsed in Belgium is so large, it took the Belgian, Dutch, Lux and German governments to bail to out! No single Government had enough capital to handle the crisis on its own. That's how bad things have got.

Iceland has agreements with Nordic (Norway, Sweden, Finland) countries to collaborate in the event of a financial disaster, it is a member of the European Economic Area so there is a fair chance other large European countries would help out, including the UK given the size of deposits held by British citizens.

What you might want to point out is that the Icelandic banks, being outside the Eurozone, cannot suck from the ECB's titty bottle.

That leaves them at an immense disadvantage.


From the FT...

European banking on borrowed time

By Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi
Published: September 23 2008 19:49 | Last updated: September 23 2008 19:49

The crucial problem on this side of the Atlantic is that the largest European banks have become not only too big to fail, but also too big to be saved.

For example, the total liabilities of Deutsche Bank (leverage ratio over 50!) amount to about €2,000bn (more than Fannie Mae) or more than 80 per cent of the gross domestic product of Germany.

This is simply too much for the Bundesbank or even the German state, given that the German budget is bound by the rules of the European Union’s stability pact and the German government cannot order (unlike the US Treasury) its central bank to issue more currency.

Similarly, the total liabilities of Barclays of around £1,300bn (leverage ratio 60!) are roughly equivalent to the GDP of the UK. Fortis bank has a leverage ratio of “only” 33, but its liabilities are three times the GDP of its home country of Belgium.

With banks that have outgrown their home turf, national treasuries and regulators in Europe are living on borrowed time: they cannot simply develop “road maps” (the only result of various Ecofin discussions of regulatory reform by finance ministers), but must contemplate a worst-case scenario.

Given that solutions for the largest institutions can no longer be found at the national level it is apparent that the European Central Bank will need to be put in charge as it is the only institution that can issue unlimited amounts of a global reserve currency. The authorities in the UK and Switzerland – which cannot rely on the ECB – can only pray that no accident happens to the giants they have in their own garden.

The banking system effectively collapsed over a year ago in April 2007.

We've been living on borrowed time ever since.

occamsrazor

jp01 - Why are you copy/pasting the same responses from thread to thread? The current situation is bad enough without people like you posting these sort of useless replies, complete with web links that don't go anywhere.

If you have useful contributions then by all means please give them, otherwise it seems clear you are just a loser with far too much time on your hands, or have some personal economic interest in promoting fearmongering... so which is it?

isofa

It's because he's a spammer, 3 our of his 4 posts are the same spam, please report if you see them

Plasticman

holloholloway wrote: »

I have a lot of money in icesave and it's in a 2 year fixed rate account. All this talk of bankruptcy is affecting my sleep. I am not sleeping properly as i am worried i will lose my hard earned money. How stupid i was for putting so much money in there and now i can't take it out. Does anyone think it will stay solvent and not go under. Everyone seems to be panicking like myself but there could be a run on icesave like there was on northern rock.Can someone allay my fears a little.

More than £35K or not? The first £35K will be safe (although if they fail it may take a while to get your hands on the cash!). The day that any bank fails and depositors lose their cash, the whole system is likely to come crashing to its knees - then no bank will be safe and you will need to put your cash under your matress!

I have money with Icesave and have no plans to withdraw it.

Trollfever

<H5 class=dates>2008.09.30, 15:48

Fitch downgrades Kaupthing Bank's credit rating




Fitch has today downgraded Kaupthing Bank's credit ratings. The Bank's Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) is downgraded from A- to BBB and the Bank's Short-term IDR is downgraded from F2 to F3. The Bank's support rating is affirmed at 2, Individual rating is downgraded from B/C to C, and Support Rating Floor is downgraded from BBB to BBB-. All ratings are placed on Rating Watch Negative.

</H5>http://www.kaupthing.com/pages/164?path=K/133944/PR/200809/1255632.xml


:eek:

Money_Grabber13579

3 words - YOU ARE PROTECTED!

Money_Grabber13579

Some more words, I've got quite a bit of money (well to me it is anyway!) in an easy access account with Icesave, and it's still there and I still don't see any reason to remove it, because I don't agree with the argument that Iclandic banks are much riskier than X bank.