How safe are UK Banks?

setmefree

People should look at the wider picture, America drops it's interest rates a few times the shares go back up same as Britain, but looking at the pattern the security has gone from lasting a few weeks to just a matter of days before they are back to the start again.
Now the B of E has just announced that they will auction 11 billion, well that should up the shares for a couple of days, but what's next they are scrapping the bottom of the barroll

notis7

Meltdown wrote: »

?

Corporate lending ... Yes, that's safe. :eek:

Pray tell ...

Have a look and see the profit margins made by corporate for HBOS this year!!!!!


as for the pray tell bit.....well London Scottish, B&B, A&L to name but a few!!!!

David_Codd

People People!! There is a sense of doom and gloom and mild panic in this thread! While we are all worried and concerned regarding our savings, mortgage rates and pensions etc, the biggest threat to any Bank is consumer confidence, lack of which can bring down any Bank or Business!

All the reports you hear on the NEWS and any other source has to be taken with the fact in mind that all the speculation is based on historical data. Comparisions are being drawn from worst case senarios at present, due to the current "mood" in the city whereas when the "Mood" is more positive then the comparisons are less hysterical.

Bottom line is economic downturns are a fact of financial life. These bubbles always burst somewhere sometime but what is needed is for the establishment to ensure that the "winners" in this situation don't exploit peoples worries for profit, which is happening now and people to act upon solid and sensible fact and not react to unfounded speculation.

Hey but what do i know - If I did I'd be stinking rich!!!

purch

consumer confidence, lack of which can bring down any Bank or Business!

...........or Economy

The biggest threat of a Recession is the threat itself..........not the actual economy

setmefree

notis7 wrote: »

Have a look and see the profit margins made by corporate for HBOS this year!!!!!

LMFAO
And how much of that was bank charges
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

setmefree

notis7 wrote: »

as for the pray tell bit.....well London Scottish, B&B, A&L to name but a few!!!!

Would that be the same London Scottish that own a well known Debt Collection Agency, the one who sends out letters demanding money even before they have the legal documents i.e Consumer Credit Agreements etc etc to collect it.:D

purch

....on the subject of the threat of recession, this is an article by James Paulsen of Wells Capital Management.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Some current economic reports do suggest the economy may already be in recession. However, if we actually do have a recession, we cannot recall another which was so widely and accurately anticipated. Indeed, it may be the only recession predicted by a consensus! Typically, recessions occur when no one is watching, not when most everyone is waiting.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Whether or not a recession results, we have certainly had a "Fearsession"! Perhaps this is fitting for an economic recovery where optimism never really emerged. Where businesses steadfastly refused to spend despite quarter after quarter of double-digit earnings gains, where retail investors never really returned to the stock market, chronically fearing a return to the dot-com nightmare and knowing every quarter that earnings surely had reached their cyclical peak. Where, reflecting an earlier near-death experience with deflation, the Federal Reserve maintained a near-zero interest rate environment during much of the early recovery and only reluctantly and slowly lifted rates once a recovery became obvious. And finally, where the consumer was always believed to be near imminent death whether due to a jobless recovery, lack of savings, too much debt, paralyzing terror fears, surging energy prices, falling home prices or because of a dirty bird flu pandemic![/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Fearsession may actually be good. It has produced behaviors which could help the economy avoid an actual recession. Businesses, knowing a recession is imminent, have significantly pared inventories. As a percent of real GDP, the inventory change in the last year is only 0.28 percent of current real GDP-its lowest level since before the recovery began! Based on the same "certainty of recession," households have slowed spending and boosted liquid asset holdings (e.g., inflation-adjusted annual growth in household liquidity remains very strong and retail money market funds have exploded) even though the unemployment rate remains below 5 percent and there has not yet been any meaningful net job losses. Bond investors have already fully-priced in a recession. Short-term Treasury bill yields are below 2 percent and the 30-year Treasury bond yield declined recently to an all time record low! Finally, "recession fears" have brought forth massive economic policy stimulus including rapid money supply growth, a negative real Fed funds rate, an increasingly positively-sloped yield curve, a stimulative falling U.S. dollar and a panicky fiscal policy accommodation!'[/FONT]

ianmr65

David_Codd wrote: »

People People!! There is a sense of doom and gloom and mild panic in this thread! While we are all worried and concerned regarding our savings, mortgage rates and pensions etc, the biggest threat to any Bank is consumer confidence, lack of which can bring down any Bank or Business!

All the reports you hear on the NEWS and any other source has to be taken with the fact in mind that all the speculation is based on historical data. Comparisions are being drawn from worst case senarios at present, due to the current "mood" in the city whereas when the "Mood" is more positive then the comparisons are less hysterical.

Bottom line is economic downturns are a fact of financial life. These bubbles always burst somewhere sometime but what is needed is for the establishment to ensure that the "winners" in this situation don't exploit peoples worries for profit, which is happening now and people to act upon solid and sensible fact and not react to unfounded speculation.

Hey but what do i know - If I did I'd be stinking rich!!!

Good post, I agree in principle, but the current crisis, is unprecedented.

At it's core are products, be they mortgage, credit swaps, or other loans, that have been chopped up, re-packaged, and re-sold, as prime, when they probably were not. And on an asset base that is rapidly reducing in price :the US, and soon to be UK and European property market, prime or otherwise.

This means that people have been borrowing money or selling assets, that are not worth anything like as much as they think they are. As these unravel, great big holes are being left in balance sheets.

The greater the exposure to these, the more likely insitutions are to get into trouble.

This is not a normal bubble, like say the tech crash. Where at least people could take a judgement about what tech stocks were worth, or not worth.

The derivatives are so complicated it is likely that the banks themselves don't have a clear picture, what there exposure is.

That has led to the credit crunch, and liquidity freeze.

One thing to note. The only reason we have a market in these horribly complicated derivative products is that the Left field, (you have to be a genius to understand it) mathematics, and computing power have finally caught up with each other to enable them to be created, and traded.

The market for CDS Derivatives alone is £50 TRILLION.
The gdp for the planet £70 TRILLION.

Ever built a house of cards!!

notis7

setmefree wrote: »

LMFAO
And how much of that was bank charges
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Their banking charges would come under their retail profits - not their corporate section! But as with any bank I reckon they make a fair whack out of illegal charges!!!!:p

qwerty007

ianmr65 wrote: »

Just for the record incase the fsa are reading this. I hold no stock and have no intrest or plans to buy or sell any in any UK or foreign banks HBOS A&L, bear strerns or anyone.
In fact i have no stock holding of any discription i sold them all last summer, when the market was at it's peak.

Probably wise. Presumably you are sitting in cash ...care to share which bank you felt safest to hold your deposits?