Should UK consumers be protectionist of our taxpayer banks?

BenL

I was just having a think over lunchtime of if there is anything we can do to protect our tax-payer owned or part-owned banks.

Looking at the list of banks in this situation it became apparent to me that I have no accounts with any of them at all.

Now we are stumping a lot of money and with this new asset protection scheme that the tax payer will end up footing a large bill for should we move to "help" these banks by trying to enable them to generate profit and cashflow?

They may not have the best products or the best rates, but in the long term a couple of %age points less in interest now could save our tax payer £ in the long term.

When my ISA fix rate is over I could move my ISA to one of them, multiply this by a few hundred thousand people and things are looking up.

Abbey (Santander) group for instance might lose out but they can look after themselves and go cap in hand to their respective regulator/government in their own country.

If you owe money each month on a credit card, you could BT across to one of these banks if they will have you, people that don't pay interest aren't welcome though.

I'm sure there will be an EU rule about the government suggesting this but we could have a MSE "Loan/Save British" scheme.

Any thoughts?

Would you put using a taxpayer owned bank on the list of desirables when looking for a financial product?

Running_Horse

I do not, and never will have, an account with these basket case companies. Nationwide may not be perfect, but have handled my current account perfectly well for the last couple of decades, and now have my mortgage ans ISA. I guess you just get a good or bad feeling for where you put your hard earned cash. Tell a lie, I have a Barclaycard, but have recently taken out an A&L alternative for the future.