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Lehman’s collapse could not be prevented over the weekend and we are definitely facing into “Great Depression” territory now in the banking system. It doesn’t create the greatest macro-economic background for a globalised economy but one thing could make it worse; a collapse of a bank here leading to queues around corners for money.
Will it happen here? Who is next?
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HBOS seems to be in the most trouble on this side of the pond, were it to go under it would affect ulster bank, halifax and bank of scotland .
They say that they are in good financial health, however their price has fallen hugely in the last two days. It is not the first time in recent months they have had a nosedive in their share price.
a run on HBOS would be catastrophic not least for the potential knock on. It is not a good couple of days in prospect if HBOS unwinds as HP and Dell announce “streamlining”.
The thought of people queueing round the corner to get access to their money is horrific.
It’s hard not to see Irish banks going bankrupt too.
The Irish people borrowed loads of money which they can’t repay to buy hovels which no sane person should ever have valued highly. And most importantly I assume (and I may be wrong here) that the Irish banks borrowed all that money from abroad (the alternative is the possibly-laughable idea that the Irish had huge amounts of real savings on deposit).
So the Irish banking system will be unable to fulfil its responsibilities to pay their debts and at least one of the Irish banks is bound to fail.
We need to gut the international banking system of these failures, institutional and individual. The central banks can try all they like to stop this clearing-out and to maintain the awful status quo, but I am getting more confident that the wonders of the market will take down many more banks, large and small, and end a few political careers as well. Many individuals will also learn hard lessons in the dangers of selfishly and excessively speculating and gambling in markets they know nothing about (e.g. residential property).
The only downside is that there will be many suicides, and many less sophisticated people will have been taken advantage of and now squeezed.