1. Terry said...

I am appalled that the BoE would hide the destination of bail out cash from the markets. It's true that knowledge would probably cause a run on another bank, but it should be up to savers and investors to determine their actions based on knowledge of the bank's financials. It is totally unethical for the regulators to avoid a run on a bank by simply hiding important financial difficulties from savers knowing that the savers would run for the hills if they knew. That does nothing to restore confidence in the system - far from it, it's ultimately counter-productive. As a saver, I'd know some banks are in trouble but not which ones. Do I want to risk having cash in a UK bank when I know there are some in difficulties but I don't know if mine is among them? As it is I am moving all my cash above the 90% guaranteed threshold into gold for now. It'll be pretty easy to see which banks have taken the cash (inside trading of shares, you can bet the directors will dump their shares knowing that the cat will eventually get out of the bag). At that point there will be another run on banks and confidence will completely evaporate in the probity and solvency of UK banks. Every man and his dog will be running for gold.