British banks face nationalisation if £400bn bailout fails
"Senior UK sources at the IMF in Washington gave strong hints tonight that if the British Government's £400 billion bailout fails, the only option left to stabilise the economy and financial system could be wholesale nationalisation of the UK banking system."
RBS, European Banks Slide on Concern About Economy
"More than $4 trillion has been erased from global equities this week".
Iceland: Britain's Credit Crunch Scapegoat
"There's nothing like an external enemy to make a country pull together, and Britain, until recently fractious and dissatisfied with its Labour government, has found a fresh foe: Iceland."
Brown Threatens to Freeze Icelandic Assets in U.K.
"The Icelandic banks are unable to finance about $61 billion of debt, 12 times the size of the economy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."
How could a country of just 300,000 people run up such a large debt stock?
Buy One Spanish Home, Get One Free
Still not interested.
U.K. Pound Has Biggest Weekly Drop Against Dollar in 8 Years
The U.K. currency was also down against the euro and the yen this week.
FTSE loses fifth of its value in a week
"London equities tumbled on Friday extending the FTSE 100’s decline to five-consecutive days during which the senior index lost a fifth of its value."
Initial Lehman CDS Auction: 90 Cents on the Dollar, Worse Than Forecast
"Those who wrote $400 billion plus of protection on Lehman's credit default swaps had been expected to make a substantial payout in the 80% to 85% of face value range, but the preliminary auction showed even worse results."
UK exports slip to create biggest goods trade deficit since 1697
"The Office for National Statistics said yesterday that July's deficit with the rest of the world had been revised upwards to £8.238bn - the biggest gap since records began in 1697. It blamed the revisions on a large number of late returns. The goods trade gap reached £8.198bn in August, well above City forecasts of £7.6bn."
6 comments:
1697 - that is going back some way.
"1697 - that is going back some way."
Wasn't the trade deficit measured in groats then?
About Iceland's debt, I have an Icelandic friend, who is not as bad off as others, and a UK friend who lived there for a time. My UK friend informs me (and backed up by two other Icelandic friends of mine) that they are gadget mad and have huge credit card bills (like 10 maxed out). Why can they get these? FISH. Fish is King in Iceland. Their fish stocks are still huge and the fishing industry in Iceland has convinced their population that Cod is bad so they can sell the Cod abroad at inflated prices (to the UK, for instance).
Anyway, I hope that helps you to understand why they could get all that credit.
"Iceland, Britains credit crunch
scapegoat"
Well, yes. Exactly what I thought. How low will Brown stoop?
"Iceland, Britains credit crunch
scapegoat"
Rockall. Broon's got Fockall.
(With apologies to Flanders & Swann. My gin-swilling granny had an amazing vinyl collection.)
WxR + f-k+D = ???
Brown's economic formula. That's why he's laughing.
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