British Government Takes Majority Interest in Lloyds/TSB/HBOS

news.bbc.co.uk...

Lloyds Banking Group has agreed a deal with the Treasury that will see the government insure £260bn of the bank's loans, the BBC has learned.
Under the agreement, the government will increase its stake in Lloyds to around 60% from the current 43%.

This isn't just another big bank being rescued by big government, Lloyds/TSB was suffering like all banks but was brought to its knees by its purchase of the struggling HBOS in a deal that was promoted by the government and allowed by the government which set aside usual trading laws to allow this "super-bank" to emerge from the crisis.

Now, having engineered a deepening crisis the government is stepping in to rescue the bank it pushed overboard.

This is getting crazy, tax-payers are paying for the government to mess-up and then clean-up. It's like a house guest breaking your lamp and taking the rest of your furniture away to compensate you - appalling.

This after the Bank of England yesterday created £75billion ex nihilo. I don't know wether this is a conspiracy to control everything or if they genuinely haven't got a clue. I think its tempting to imagine its a conspiracy rather than an unavoidable disaster. I'd rather imagine there was a psychopathic pilot than a lone screaming stewardess in the cockpit at the minute.

its the new name for nationalisation - unlike the USA , in the UK when a bank gets a bailout it goes over peice by piece to the governemnt - and the end result as here is that lloyds is effectively a governement run bank

reply to post by Harlequin


I sem to remember hearing the UK govt is setting up independent boards to run part-nationalized banks rather than actually running them directly. (Anyone is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong.)

Either way (yet more) tax-payers money is effectively being thrown into running a de facto state enterprise (red flag, anybody?). And arguably being put at risk.

What's quite remarkable too is the amount of private investment they are seeking for public bodies - only last week proposing to sell of 1/3 of the Post Office to private interests. Its so peculiar watching them privatise the public owned and nationalise the private.

I really do think they, the governments of the world, have NO idea what to do in the current crisis.