I realise that I don’t fully understand why the banks were bailed out at such a huge cost to us all. (That cost does come from us, even if it is borrowed money, we have to pay for it in our taxes!)
I thought that it was to put the banks back on a sound footing so that they could do what banks are supposed to do – that is to lend money for investment and mortgages, to support businesses, to encourage new companies to be set up, to allow people to buy expensive items from UK shops, etc.
But it seems to me now that all these billions of pounds simply allowed the banks to be rich again. All of their losses, their bad investments, their unregulated behaviour, their focus on huge profits and massive bonus payments would seem to have all simply been forgotten. They even spend millions on functions at Christmas!
These poor banks have run into credit problems because of their own actions and, according to the government, they must be salvaged!!!
And now the banks, as far as I am concerned, are behaving in a totally hypocritical way! They got into financial trouble and needed rescuing. We, that is the taxpayers of the UK, rescued them. And they have responded by refusing to lend money, by withdrawing overdrafts and credit arrangements, insisting on huge deposits before providing mortgages, etc, etc etc.
Where is this government that we are suppose dto have in the UK? They seem powerless to act. The banks are walking all over them (and us) and this government is failing to respond at all. It really is scandalous that so much money has been given to to banks to bail them out and they are not using this money to help the UK to get out of the recession that we are so plainly in.
Maybe this government should have had the courage to let the banks that had brought themselves to the brink of bankruptcy actually go bankrupt!! Then they could have used the billions that they gave to the banks to help the businesses of the UK to survive and to keep trading.
We are now seeing bank staff being made redundant. Perhaps the banks should be forced to keep all of their staff at this difficult time. Perhaps they shouldn’t be allowed to make staff members, with the subsequent cost to the economy and and to their families, redundant. Perhaps they should be forced to keep their staff instead of expecting the tax payers of the UK to pay for them!
Perhaps the recession would not have become so serious if the government had rescued the economy instead of rescuing the banks!!
