The potentially huge exposure of UK banks in Dubai, depreciating some UK bank share prices again this morning, is a reminder of just how much UK bank lending grew in recent years. The above chart shows the growth in external claims of the UK owned banks around the world over the past decade. The sums lent almost quadrupled to nearly $4 trillion in 8 years. Anyone interested in discovering which bubbles the UK banks (and now taxpayers) have funded can find the data on the Bank of England website – $1.2 trillion in the United States, $125 billion in Spain, $183 billion in Ireland, $50 billion to the UAE/Dubai. Bank profits soared, and the “New North Sea Oil” of booming bonus pools was taxed to fund ever growing government spending.
As the above chart shows, RBS managed the quite exceptional feat of quadrupling in size in just 3 years, almost surpassing HSBC as the world’s largest bank with nearly £2.5
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