He’ll have to because nobody else will. As Robert Peston says ‘Poor RBS, poor Britain’ – today’s figures are catastrophic. Peston’s been digging and the news gets worse:
‘But perhaps the most chilling numbers are these: we as taxpayers put in £25.5bn of new equity into this bank last autumn, the second instalment of the £45.5bn we have invested in total; but over the past year, the equity of this bank has increased by less than £16bn to £80bn.
So almost £10bn of the £25.5bn we’ve only just put into RBS has already been wiped out by losses.
Which, I think, is probably the best measure of the degree to which RBS is still haemorrhaging.’
Pete is dead right that this detracts from ensuring these disasters are not repeated. The three main parties have all made the refrain ‘no reward for failure’ but have done nothing; parliament has been largely supine before the Masters of the Universe.
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