UK Govt to ensure savers get money back

manhattan

Nick_C wrote: »

According to the BBC, about 350,000 savers had deposits of about £4,500,000,000 in Icesave. A relatively small cost then of about £170 for every Income Tax Payer in the UK.

To attack someone's intelligence for expressing an opinion is rather puerile.

I think its time the tax payer stopped picking up the bill for people's reckless behaviour. People will only start being more cautious if they have to pay at least some something towards the price of their folly. Why should we UK taxpayers have to bail out people who have been let down by the Icelandic Government? And why the hell are we bailing out people who were utterly foolish and had more than £35k in Icesave?

They are going to chase Iceland for the money. Most probably by seizing their assets in the uk to sell on.

Iceland pulled a nasty trick by using uk savers funds to save their own country by blocking uk savers from withdrawing their money whilst letting Icelanders have full access to their accounts.

occamsrazor

Now is not the time for "I-told-you-so", what's done is done. People are concerned about their savings. Leave those comments for later please.

Nick_C

If HMG can seize Icelandic Assets that will cover the value of bailing out depositors with Icesave then fantastic, it will be Brown and Darling's greatest achievement. I am sceptical that it will work out that way though, and if there is a shortfall it should come from the Icesave depositors.

It worries me that people are not learning lessons from this. Martin was saying on TV that he gave the right advice. Depositors in Icesave think they acted sensibly. People have to start learning from their mistakes.

TuftyMatt

Manhattan is right that AD will make Iceland pay up by seizing assetts.

I think I will help him and go and get my £25k back in frozen chickens and garden peas from my local branch.....LOL

lewianbra

I'll perhaps make myself quite unpopular with this posting but I don't have any bad feelings toward neither Iceland nor Landsbanki about most of what happened.

Let's face it, this is an economy with 300,000 people and at some point it seemed that it started to become super-rich, and people from all over the world threw their money at that country. They were not as careful as they may have been but I doubt whether any politician or bank manager in this country would have been wiser. Certainly they didn't intend to strip innocent people off their saving, they rather did what many others would have done in their place, among them possibly most of us who have put money in there (there is no reason to expect the five most intelligent people in Iceland to be more intelligent than the five mosty intelligent people among the same number of Icesave savers). At some point it became a downward spiral. As far as I understand, Landsbanki went bust not because it had got too much wrong (apart from expanding too fast) but just because it is Icelandic and at some point every foreigner tried to get his money out of Iceland quickly.

In such a situation, stopping the whole thing to think over their options was a pretty much logical step of the Icelandic government and not to give too much information before at least they know what they're doing isn't too surprising either.

Of course it sounds bad to us that their PM said that domestic savings are safe and not ours, but his voters are in Iceland, so what do you expect? I'm sure that the British government will do what they can to get out of Iceland what can be got out.

I think it's just a bad situation and I still prefer to sit in the UK with Darling's guarantee than in Iceland so good luck to them as well.

I'll go on listening to Bjork certainly!

Eezageeza

occamsrazor wrote: »

Now is not the time for "I-told-you-so", what's done is done. People are concerned about their savings. Leave those comments for later please.

Absolutely right.

Nick_C wrote: »

According to the BBC, about 350,000 savers had deposits of about £4,500,000,000 in Icesave. A relatively small cost then of about £170 for every Income Tax Payer in the UK.

Yes, still small compared with the total cost of this financial crisis.

Nick_C wrote: »

To attack someone's intelligence for expressing an opinion is rather puerile.

An opinion based on incomplete understanding. Yes, you're right that this doesn't necessarily indicate lack of intelligence though. But to criticise Icesave customers for not predicting the demise of Icesave (something that noone could predict) but to validate someone else's clear lack of understanding is not at all hypocritical is it?

Nick_C wrote: »

I think its time the tax payer stopped picking up the bill for people's reckless behaviour. People will only start being more cautious if they have to pay at least some something towards the price of their folly. Why should we UK taxpayers have to bail out people who have been let down by the Icelandic Government? And why the hell are we bailing out people who were utterly foolish and had more than £35k in Icesave?

Yes, and I don't think my tax money should pay for people's kids to go to school, or for people's healthcare for people who smoke/play reckless sports/binge drink, or pay for public transport I don't use. Spot the hypocrasy again? We all live in a society where we benefit from supporting each other.

confused_landlord

Eezageeza wrote: »

Yes, a relief indeed. What I would like to know is what happens next. Do we wait for Icesave to be declared insolvent and then wait for a form to arrive in the post to reclaim our money? Or do we have to chase for it? I wonder whether under these circumstances the government will adhere to the EU "rules" that we should get our money back within 3 months.

According to working lunch, depositers wont have to do anything. The FSA will get hold of depositors details from the bank and contact depositors themselves.

Eezageeza

Nick_C wrote: »

It worries me that people are not learning lessons from this. Martin was saying on TV that he gave the right advice. Depositors in Icesave think they acted sensibly. People have to start learning from their mistakes.

So, if the UK government allowed Icesave depositors to lose their money, the lesson to learn would be that the FSA/UK government is utterly useless and one cannot trust any companies regulated by them and allowed to trade in the UK, not to mention companies with headquarters in foreign countries. Therefore we shouldn't invest in any of those banks (which would include HSBC) or buy shares in any of those companies, and put our money in a jar under the bed instead. Can you imagine what the knock-on effect would be to the country's economy? This is about investor confidence. Get with the wider picture!

nilrem_2

And why the hell are we bailing out people who were utterly foolish and had more than £35k in Icesave?

I wonder if you would say that if your savings were at risk in Icesave?
Don't forget a lot of us put money in Icesave Fixed rate accounts a long time ago when we were advised that Icesave was as safe as any UK bank and we were all encouraged to take our cash away from low interest paying accounts, it's only recently that people have been advised to split their savings up and if it's Fixed than you can't!

Nick_C

nilrem wrote: »

I wonder if you would say that if your savings were at risk in Icesave?

There is absolutely no way that I would have put more than £35K in any bank (or group of banks). The FSCS has been around for nearly 8 years, and I have always been aware of the risk of losing money if a bank went under. But as a taxpayer, I may have to end up bailing out people who have not been so prudent, and that annoys me.

For the record, I considered saving with Icesave and felt it too risky.