22/08/2010 by JohnBuck.

It seems that almost one third of adults in this country have raided their piggy banks over the past year to cover shortfalls in their income. This is from a survey, by Schroders, a well respected investment firm.  They estimate that savers have taken out a total of £60bn. So on average each person is taking out about £4,600. This is mainly because interest rates are at a 300-year low and savings deals have been taken away from the market, but there is also currently more incentive to spend than to save. My question is what happens when we have used up our savings? This recession has definitely not bitten some of us yet . . .

Posted in Finance | 2 Comments »

10/08/2010 by Fin.

The United Kingdom’s four biggest banks: HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland have made an amazing turnaround . . . or have they? In 2008 as a whole they lost £22.3bn, while in the whole of 2009 they made £13.7bn.  All these banks saw impairments suffer on bad loans fall dramatically. This means that losses were not as bad as they had forecast, so the banks had to set aside far less money to cover them. But If you strip out the fall in the charge for bad debts, it’s difficult to see that there’s much growth. And this could be a problem if impairments start to rise again. So these bank figures are just making everyone feel better with no real substance.

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06/08/2010 by TonyM.

With the recent announcements by the Royal Bank of Scotland and other big banks that they have all made major profits, its obvious to me that they have had no pain and lots of gain. How can we make things fair in this current economic climate, so that this so called pain is more evenly spread.

Posted in Finance | 1 Comment »