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[Chris]

Originally Posted by Hugh_Jazz

Exactly whose word is this? Havent heard this anywhere.

Are you not aware that Cloud is an expert economic advisor? His opinion is sought (or usually just given) on business matters far and wide (within the confines of this messageboard).

[Hugh_Jazz]

Originally Posted by Chris

Are you not aware that Cloud is an expert economic advisor? His opinion is sought (or usually just given) on business matters far and wide (within the confines of this messageboard).

Expertise apparently epitomised by his reputation score?

[stuartmaxwell]

Cloud reads the newspapers and probably reads FT.com most days which will make him quite astute in about 15 years time, however, most of the flippant nonsense he is spouting on this website only compounds my belief that he is a clown.

I would maybe take his opinions on economic and current affairs more seriously if he was actually had some kind of wisdom from experience to offer

[Cloud]

Originally Posted by Hugh_Jazz

Exactly whose word is this? Havent heard this anywhere.

I've just read it an hour or so ago on some UK paper's website...though I've looked at a fair few, so I don't remeber which. It might've just been speculation, hence saying 'word is' - it's not been confirmed anywhere, and I doubt there's any concrete plan yet.

Everything is still so up in the air though - I'm not convinced that the UK Government will risk the backlash in Scotland by the Bank of Scotland name vanishing, which is why I think a spin-off may happen with the Scottish operation. Lloyds have got the government hand over fist on this one, and they surely aren't going to want to retain the now-bad name in England, are they?

Politically, this is probably yet another nightmare for Gordon Brown - the Mail types have been bashing the fact that Lloyds intend to make savings, yet Brown won't dare cause job losses in Scotland for fear of handing the SNP even more.

Interesting point was raised by a friend of mine - could the Scottish Govenrment nationalise any spun off BoS operation in the meantime? Labour would undoubtably resist such a thing (creating a national bank for Scotland would be yet another blow to the Union) - but does anyone know what the legal situation is?

Edit : interesting aside - I've been reading that only 4 billion of savers money is actually guaranteed by the FSCS. Anyone know is this is true?

[Hugh_Jazz]

Originally Posted by Cloud

I've just read it an hour or so ago on some UK paper's website...though I've looked at a fair few, so I don't remeber which. It might've just been speculation, hence saying 'word is' - it's not been confirmed anywhere, and I doubt there's any concrete plan yet.

Everything is still so up in the air though - I'm not convinced that the UK Government will risk the backlash in Scotland by the Bank of Scotland name vanishing, which is why I think a spin-off may happen with the Scottish operation. Lloyds have got the government hand over fist on this one, and they surely aren't going to want to retain the now-bad name in England, are they?

Politically, this is probably yet another nightmare for Gordon Brown - the Mail types have been bashing the fact that Lloyds intend to make savings, yet Brown won't dare cause job losses in Scotland for fear of handing the SNP even more.

Interesting point was raised by a friend of mine - could the Scottish Govenrment nationalise any spun off BoS operation in the meantime? Labour would undoubtably resist such a thing (creating a national bank for Scotland would be yet another blow to the Union) - but does anyone know what the legal situation is?

Edit : interesting aside - I've been reading that only 4 billion of savers money is actually guaranteed by the FSCS. Anyone know is this is true?

Some UK paper? In an article written by Mr. Whatshisface?

[Cloud]

Originally Posted by Hugh_Jazz

Some UK paper? In an article written by Mr. Whatshisface?

There's an article on Sky News that clearly shows that no decisions have been made - so it's possible that the article was merely scaremongering about the loss of the BoS name.

HBOS Takeover: What Changes Will Punters See? | Business | Sky News

As an aside, if anyone's worried about their money - stick it into Northern Rock.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Cloud

As an aside, if anyone's worried about their money - stick it into Northern Rock.

No, stick it into National Savings & Investments or buy gold with it.

[Hugh_Jazz]

Originally Posted by Hugh_Jazz

HBOS was actually a solvent bank with a relatively good balance sheet despite the credit crunch and their exposure to the mortgage market.

One of their biggest problems was greedy investors 'short selling' en masse on HBOS shares, which exacerbated the already downward trend in their share price and turned them from a struggling bank (no different to RBS, Barclays etc), to a bank that was royally fucked

This practice needs to be outlawed before it causes another big company to needlessly go under.

FSA have announced a temporary ban on short selling. Hopefully wont be long before it's permanent.

[daveofficer]

just to point out that rbs aren't struggling as such. they're the 3rd biggest bank in the world and the 2nd biggest in the uk(behind hsbc if you must know, though this will change now obviously).

their quite substantial loss earlier this year wasn't helped by a £10 billion buyout of abn-amro but they are doing pretty well in general banking terms and also raised £12 billion in a shares issue.

from what i saw at work today(guess i should fess up that i work for them now) they're also doing a nice bit of business from bos customers who are transferring some or all of their savings over to us. if i hadn't got a job with rbs i'd still be looking at moving my accounts from hbos as i left tsb years ago because i was unhappy with their service.

if anyone wants to make some money it's probably a pretty good time to buy shares in banks and hold them for a wee while. or even a few hours. a chap at work bought a bunch of hbos shares this yesterday and sold them mid morning to make a couple of hundred pounds.

also it's a fallacy to say that hbos were in trouble because of short selling. according to channel 4 news anyway, they did a wee feature about it indicating that on loan shares in hbos increased by only a couple of percent to 5.5% while their share price dropped 65%. the amount of shares being loaned is apparently a good indicator of short selling. this went over my head a bit so i'm happy for someone to point this out as false. where hbos really struggled was getting money from other banks as they appeared to be vulnerable(regardless of how vulnerable they actually were).

meh. banks are changing. they have to. i just went on a two day course in edinburgh and selling was barely mentioned at all. the focus was entirely on helping customers and trying to save or make them money with accounts that suit their circumstances and their needs. bit late perhaps but maybe it's the silver lining of all this if we finally get more ethical banking if only at street level. that's my view anyhow, we'll see how i feel after working in a bank for a few years

[Cloud]

Originally Posted by Neil

No, stick it into National Savings & Investments or buy gold with it.

Gold would be a dreadful investment - it might hold its value in the event of a complete meltdown, but otherwise it's far too volitile. Even today, it jumped $15 an ounce in the space of about two hours.

Look at the 30 year history - 30 Year Gold Price History.

Even silver has been all over the place in the last couple of days - so investing in precious metals might not be the most sensible thing right now. It'll always have some value, but there's no guarantee that the price might not drop considerably once the current mess in world banking has been sorted out.

However, I could be wrong with this - but I *think* there's been growing demand from China and India for gold? I could be making this up though...

Agreed with NS&I - but Northern Rock has 100% guarantee too, and no government would dare let Northern Rock collapse now. A collapse in a nationalised Northern Rock would (as would a collapse in RBS) would destroy the entire foundations of the banking system in the UK, which would be political suicide in today's environment.

Originally Posted by Hugh Jazz

FSA have announced a temporary ban on short selling. Hopefully wont be long before it's permanent.

Can I ask why you'd be in favour of a permanent ban? I don't quite understand it, but I've seen it defended on the basis of serving to deflate the value of overvalued share prices - so I'd be interested to see why people are so against it.

(yes, I understand the role it played in the demise of HBOS as an independent bank, but there's absolutely no way of telling at the minute if they were right to short sell or not)

Originally Posted by daveofficer

if anyone wants to make some money it's probably a pretty good time to buy shares in banks and hold them for a wee while. or even a few hours. a chap at work bought a bunch of hbos shares this yesterday and sold them mid morning to make a couple of hundred pounds.

RBS would probably be a sound investment at the minute - they're at a 3 month low, you've mentioned that they're attracting people from BoS - all in all, not a bad situation for them to be in. Unless of course, they're in even more mess with US subprime debt than anyone realises.