Santander savings

sgl1965

We are constantly told that our savings in Santander are safe as the British branch is independent from the Spanish parent company and the government will safeguard up to £85,000 in an individual's accounts. This is all very well in theory but if the worst was to happen are the government actually able to help out tens of millions of savers to this level? It costs nothing to tell us our savings are safe but bailing out trillions of pounds to savers is another matter. Could they simply hold their hands up and say sorry, it's just too big a burden for the beleaguered tax payer to provide? Northern Rock were far smaller than Santander.

innovate

If there were tens of millions of savers to be bailed out because all the UK banks have gone tits up, savings would be the last problem on anybody's mind because not only the country, but the world, as we know it would have collapsed.

There are some 62m people living in the UK. About 11m of these are under 18, and they probably haven't got £85K in their bank account, so take 11m off the 62m.

How many of the remaining 51m people do you think all have £85K in their bank accounts? How many of those do you think have their money in Santander?

And why do you think Santander are more at risk than other UK banks who have worse credit ratings than Santander, and a lot larger exposure to southern european bad debts?

talexuser

Any government who reneged on savings protection would never get another vote, ever, so would just print any amount of money irrespective of inflation or anything else. But at that stage there would be no food in the shops to buy due to total collapse of the banking system so I think paper money would be pretty low down on anybody's list of priorities, it would be fighting for a place in the local soup kitchen queue or tent city.