So how bad do you folk think this financial crisis will get?

So really how bad is this financial crisis going to get? I would love to hear some honest.unsensationalised opinions on this.
I’ve been a member of this site for a few years now; I have closely followed a lot of threads concerning the break down of the current financial systems. I work in banking nothing exciting but its what I do.

Currently I work for HBOS, before that Lloyds TSB and even there now defunct equitable life that ironically Hbos bought.
I do tend to see conspiracy’s so have been speculating on the future of my current employer for the past few months now. It was obvious the bank was in trouble from March this year really, our share price was brutally reduced, when I started we were around £10 a share, yesterday we managed to achieve a draw dropping 88p, I know how big we are to the Mortgage market for the UK so knew no way would the government let us go under. I speculated that a bank would step-in and try and merge with us bit because of the size such a merger thought it would only be done in very special circumstances.

Hey presto what happened, speculators short selled our shares and a crisis of confidence ensured, in steps the government with the idea of Lloyds taking us over and just to stop the monopolies and mergers getting involved they would legislate to allow it to happen!

This thing happened so fast it is simply amazing, certainly more to this than meets the eye in my opinion.

Anyway back to my original question. How much longer and worse do you all think this will get. In the short term I seem more banks dropping, the hedge funds must be in pretty bad shape now, so may be some crashes from them. I think more mergers/take over as well, we gonna have a few “super banks” setting the economic rules and policy’s for the western world, kind of scary..

Also if the HBOS & Lloyds deal goes ahead, what happens if they go down????!

Scary stuff really.
Regards

Hope



[edit on 18-9-2008 by Hope_for_reason]

Britain bans short-selling, citing 'extreme' market climate

www.marketwatch.com...[844E5B8E-C1AE-4C34-AD80-20193FF1B292]&siteid=mktw

On this forum, they are freaking out about this:

www.tickerforum.org...

reply to post by pluckynoonez


Thanks, that’s a good thread, my understanding of short selling is that it really is not a good thing, I’m not market savvy though so I accept I may not be right on this.

But no doubt about it the shares in HBOS were driven lower and lower because of this short selling, If people can do this then surely being able to bring a major bank to its knees is just economic terrorism. Or just payback for all the money they have been rolling in!

Cheers