So there we have it – at close, the FTSE share index had dropped by 7.85 percent, its largest one-day fall since 1987. The banks were, predictably, the big losers. HBOS plummeted by 20 percent; the Royal Bank of Scotland by 20 percent; and Barclays by 15 percent.
Meanwhile, Alistair Darling gave a statement in Parliament (watch it here) which was full of the same obfuscating language that Angela Merkel’s been employing recently. Will the Government provide a 100% guarantee for all UK savings? Hm, it’s hard to tell. Apparently, they’ll take “whatever measures are necessary to maintain the stability of the financial system”. And, reassuringly, they’ll also do “whatever it takes” and “everything we can”.
You can read into that whatever you want, and that’s precisely the problem. Should a strengthened guarantee package eventually come into being, what’s the betting that numerous companies and individuals will already have transferred their savings to banks in Ireland?
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