The £35000 limit is largely irrelevant.

edwinac_2

amcluesent wrote: »

power-cuts knocking out the ATMs, RoP cyber-attacks on the critical national infrastructure and BACS collapsing.

Good call.. I salvaged this from the bit bucket.. Sets you thinking.. Look at the dates of the blackouts. How weird is that?

Don't know if you read Wayne Madsen, the Vatican-linked ex-US Navy spook and Kevin Poulsen of SecurityFocus? They both claimed the strange cluster of power blackouts in 2003 probably point towards cyber attacks.

The attacks may have targetted the SCADA control systems of the power grids around the globe. The key manufacturer of SCADA systems is the Hathaway Corporation.

The use of networked control systems with Remote Intelligent Gateways (RIGs) that are accessed across the public internet, leaves national electricity grids especially vulnerable to cyber attacks.

[FONT=verdana, arial]Of a lot of the recent power outages: [/FONT]
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How does one sift through them to determine which were possibly routine, and which were highly unusual? [/FONT]
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Here's the timeline (that I don't have time to research) - can someone else investigate more?

I'd say create a chart of data - when, where, how many affected, for how long, reasons put forth, etc.

To get started, here's the preliminary data from above in chronological order.[/FONT]
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The only odd thing I've noticed in terms of a pattern is that August and September both had blackouts on the 23rd and the 28th of each month.

[/FONT]What's the natural likelihood of that???

[FONT=verdana, arial]To me, this pattern is alarming in terms of the sudden and regular blackouts in August and Sept of 2003.
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And notice the symmetry - both have 4 and 5 blackouts, not very bizarre or chaotic, almost evenly divided by month, not just 1 or 2 in one month and then 6 or 7 in the next, or 5 in one week, or any on the same day.

[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial]Take a look and have a say! There's something bizarre going on - is it sabotage, terrorism, capitalism, a 'crumbling grid,' coincidence?[/FONT]

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[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial]August 6, 2003 - Buenos Aires was hit by a sudden blackout.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana, arial]August 14, 2003 - United States and Canada, 50 million affected.[/FONT]
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August 18, 2003 - Republic of Georgia, 4.5 million affected.[/FONT]
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August 23, 2003 - Finland's capital Helsinki and suburbs, over a half million people affected.[/FONT]
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August 28, 2003 - London and southeast England.[/FONT]
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[/FONT]
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September 1, 2003 - Kuala Lumpur (capital city) and five other Malaysian states.[/FONT]
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September 2, 2003 - Cancun,Mexico. Power was out for 6 hours, affected 3 million people (1 week before WTO meeting).[/FONT]
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September 23, 2003 - eastern Denmark and southern Sweden, 4 million were affected.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana, arial]September 28, 2003 - Italy and Geneva, Switzerland, 57 million people affected.[/FONT]

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And virtually no major blackouts since then.... How strange.[/FONT]


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KingL

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Rather obscure Posts

Repetition of Paranoia ?

foofi22

GBY wrote: »

Although the capital is protected how is interest affected? For example I have savings with Bradford and Bingley, if the savings side is bought by Santander for example, are they obliged to honour the current interest rate and pay it.

I think this is a good point - anyone know the answer to this?

altocumulus

Why should they feel obliged to do anything that B&B have done?

Not forgetting, though, that Abbey have a good rate of interest on one of their savings accounts.

Fella

ad44downey wrote: »

How much evidence do you need? Forget about all the £35K or £100K limit nonsense. In the case of Northern Rock and now B+B ALL savers money, every single penny is safe. Some people will never be convinced, they like being scared, it's pointless even trying to assuage them

No, people are scared for the simple reason that THE GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO SAY THAT ALL DEPOSITS ARE GUARANTEED. (for banks other than NRK & B&B).

If they really WERE guaranteed you know & I know that this Government would be falling over itself to announce that fact.

The fact that they consistently & repeatedly fail to do so (including as recently as 15 minutes ago on BBC TV when they were asked if they would guarantee all deposits a la Ireland - but yet again they refused) means that people are very sensible to be nervous.

I could very easily see a scenario something like:

1. A large institution goes bust.

2. The FSCS doesn't have nearly enough funds to pay. Not even remotely close

3. The Govt says something like "we'll guarantee that everyone get's the £35,000 that the FSCS should have provided. Unfortunately we can't spend taxpayers money on reimbursing anything beyond that".

And the Government's own committee has already admitted anything above £35,000 is at risk.

Paul_Herring

No, people are scared for the simple reason that THE GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO SAY THAT ALL DEPOSITS ARE GUARANTEED. (for banks other than NRK & B&B).

I thought it was because the media repeat, continually, day after day, 24hrs a day, doom and gloom about how `only` £35,000 is protected.[1]

I'm sure this didn't happen in the last bear market, when the cover was substantially less.

In fact it only became an issue after the media started scaremongering over NR and people started withdrawing money. (No, I'm not absolving NR over any blame over their practices, merely that the reporting by the media certainly didn't help the situation.)

Of course, after that, it gave the media all the excuse they needed to over-hype things. Not like they either needed an excuse, or that they didn't anyway.

2. The FSCS doesn't have nearly enough funds to pay. Not even remotely close

Well they don't 'at the moment' anyway. The compensation scheme is basically funded from as-needed contributions requested from the survivors.

[1] Of course, the other thing the media has over-hyped in the recent past is how indebted as a nation we are (remember the "UK is nearly/at/past £1tn in debt" headlines not too long back?) Given these two irreconcilable 'facts' - what percentage of the nation actually has more than £35,000 saved up? To how many people does this limit actually affect?

I'm conveniently ignoring the fact that if a big institution did go bust, then not every member of that institution would need to be owed £35,000 for the FSCS to be in big trouble.

Primrose

I've read that it will soon be impossible to put more savings into Northern Rock because within a couple of weeks they will be at the maximum limit of the amount of funds they can hold because of certain European Directives. Does that mean that the next safest bet will be Bradford & Bingley, unless the government step in pretty quickly to drastically raise the compensation limits? I take on board what others have said about the government not allowing any bank to fail, despite the compensation limit but an expert opinion from somebody of what actually happens in such circumstances would be helpful. Does it actually mean that the infrastructure (buildings, branches, employees, brand name, etc) can all be eliminated but the actual savings deposits are guaranteed or absorbed and taken over by the organisation which rescues it?

cellplex

GBY wrote: »

Although the capital is protected how is interest affected? For example I have savings with Bradford and Bingley, if the savings side is bought by Santander for example, are they obliged to honour the current interest rate and pay it.

I saw this section in the FAQ of the FSCS website and I think from reading it they would only pay you your capital investment and not interest? Am I right in thinking that if you had a £20k 1 year savings bond giving a guaranteed 6% gross interest rate with, say, Abbey and they defaulted as defined by the FSCS , you would only receive £20k back from the FSCS?

From the FSCS website FAQ

8. Does compensation cover any guarantees I was given?

The fact that the return on your investment or policy was described as 'guaranteed' does not necessarily mean that we can pay you compensation equal to the return you were promised. FSCS can pay compensation only for financial loss. For example, for investment claims the aim of compensation is generally to put you back in the position you would have been in had you not invested.

altocumulus

cellplex wrote: »

I saw this section in the FAQ of the FSCS website and I think from reading it they would only pay you your capital investment and not interest? Am I right in thinking that if you had a £20k 1 year savings bond giving a guaranteed 6% gross interest rate with, say, Abbey and they defaulted as defined by the FSCS , you would only receive £20k back from the FSCS?

From the FSCS website FAQ

8. Does compensation cover any guarantees I was given?

The fact that the return on your investment or policy was described as 'guaranteed' does not necessarily mean that we can pay you compensation equal to the return you were promised. FSCS can pay compensation only for financial loss. For example, for investment claims the aim of compensation is generally to put you back in the position you would have been in had you not invested.

How much clearer does this have to be written to say what is does say....

Fella

Paul_Herring wrote: »

I thought it was because the media repeat, continually, day after day, 24hrs a day, doom and gloom about how `only` £35,000 is protected.[1]

I'm sure this didn't happen in the last bear market, when the cover was substantially less.

In fact it only became an issue after the media started scaremongering over NR and people started withdrawing money.

No, it became an issue after banks started dropping like flies.

The days of blaming this on the media are long gone. This is a real crisis, not a made-up one.