Update: It has been revealed the UK's citizens face at least a decade of pain to pay off the debts from the banking bailout, according to a treasury minister. Lord Myners spoke candidly about how bad the situation is. And it contradicts what the prime minister Gordon Brown has said, when he called the banking bailout a temporary measure.
More disturbingly, Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, has spoken of the need for rule-breaking solutions to cope with the scale of economic damage done by the ten-year debt bubble.
The scale of damage to UK banking has some believing by year's end, the UK will only have two UK-quoted bank shares: HSBC and Standard Chartered. An article in the country's Independent newspaper has reported that all the country's banks are now insolvent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 18229.html
What is unknown at this point is how much Britain's young workers are willing to pay the price for this bailout, facing the prospect of earning a very weak pound, huge taxes and low salaries and benefits, until the overhang of debt is worked off.
The UK government announced a 'blank cheque' bailout of the country's banks yesterday, after its £37 billion bailout in October 2008 had failed to make the banks solvent and start lending again.
The currency then dropped to its lowest point in five years against the US dollar (it has hit a seven year low in trading today). A credit rating agency is considering downgrading the UK because its debts are soaring so quickly. If this happens, it will mean the government will struggle to pay interest payments and convince global markets to buy UK debt.
Jim Rogers, the co-founder of Quantum fund with George Soros, today told Bloomberg News that “I would urge you to sell any sterling you might have. It's finished. I hate to say it, but I would not put any money in the UK.”
The UK's citizens are currently the most indebted per person in human history, even outstripping Americans. The size of the debts are so large, the government is considering printing money to help hyperinflate away the country's debts, using something called 'quantitative easing'. The Bank of England was given permission yesterday to do this.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/britain- ... bankruptcy