Turns out HMG are now sitting on a profit of £9Bn from the "bail out". Nice timing…..

Better than if Gideon had allowed them all to fail, eh?

Think they will hang onto the shares a bit longer untill the banks get rid of some more of the toxoc debt then flog it all off. Should be a tidy profit.

As above, unless they're complete f***wits* they should make a tidy profit

*oh right 🙄

Let's see what negative spin the nasty party put on that

So thats everyone slating the Pm for spending taxpayers money to bail the banks out, then slating him because its made the taxpayers a profit, or have I missed something?

Eh, where's this profit then? Somebody give me a linky. All I can find is a story about Lloyds group making a profit – they've not released any details on the numbers, and I doubt it's anywhere near wiping out the losses they previously made, it simply means they're not losing more money.

RBS shares have jumped 75% in little more than two months and a £26bn combined loss on both stakes at the end of last year has now been reversed to a profit of £9.4bn. The Guardian has calculated that the profit on the 84% stake in RBS tonight stood at £7.4bn while the taxpayer's 41% share in Lloyds was worth almost £2bn more than the Treasury paid for it.

If this parliament had another year to run I suspect Labour would get a fourth term without too much difficulty, Darling would be a shoe-in for leader and Osbourne would have a career in daytime television to look forward to. But it remains to early to tell. 🙂

I thought this would happen at the time. Seemed like a good way to make a shedload of money for the Govt whilst simultaneously cushioning the economy and avoiding a depression. Since the banks were not structurally failing, just having a severe cashflow problem, I thought injecting cash in return for ownership of something likely to become very valuable was pretty shrewd.

Looks like a top job so far, Darling. Nice one. Now I just hope it bears fruit the way it should.

I was thinking that the govt should rinse the banks for all they could get.
I couldn't understand how they could lose. Maybe they should hold onto the shares for the long term and take the lions share of the dividends. Or maybe buy our gold back!

druidh – Member
Turns out HMG are now sitting on a profit of £9Bn from the "bail out". Nice timing…..

That should see our taxes reduced then, or

more money for aged care, or

more money for education, or etc etc

Fat chance!

Apparently if the Lloyds TSB shares double their current value (maybe wrong here) then the tax payer will gain 150bn which is 8* all national insurance contributions. According to some guy on bbc breakfast news this morning.

I can't work out why the Gov isn't charging these bloody banks a whopping unauthorized borrowing fee?

Fat chance!

Meaning what?

Seems to me that the banks are allowed to tell anyone what they want to hear, depending on the audience, to suit their own ends. And nobody seeems to feel the need to press them to produce any evidence to substantiate it

Like this from Yesterdays Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/25/goldman-sachs-senator-email-revelations

So.. Goldman Sachs are jumping around with glee telling their shareholders 'look! Look! We're making absolutely shed-loads of cash again!!! Wooohooooooooooo!!! We're in the moneeeeeeeeeeeey!!!!" etc etc

then when they're pulled up about profiteering at everyone elses expense, they look as humble as its possible to look (not very). and say "Oh woe is us. However are we to manage? We actually lost 1.2 billion"

Well what the **** is it?!!! Its one or the other

I've run a business and I have the tax man going through my books with a tooth comb. So why, given what's happened, is no-one going through these companies books and finding out exactly what the **** is going on!!!

One rule for one, one rule for whoever is offering highly paid directorsips when you leave your career in politics

It's possible that it's really "one rule for Binners Enterprises Holdings (Holdings) Incorporated, and one rule for Goldman Sachs, and that that's to do with one of them genuinely being more important to whether the world's economy falls over and the Dark Ages return than the other. And if that's right I reckon I can live with it, even if there is the odd lucrative job going. 🙂

Goldmann Sachs have teams of people trying to hide the dodgy stuff they get up to. You don't.

Simples.

There's no easy solution. The more legislation you put in place, the more big companies will try to avoid it. You might as well ask to stop all crime. Nice, but ain't gonna happen as long as there's an incentive to do it.

Cheers BD, But I'm really not that pivotal to the state of the worlds economy 😀

Its a fair point though. Why is nobody going through these companies books?

Cheers BD, But I'm really not that pivotal to the state of the worlds economy

Ooh I dunno; where would Hora be, without your beer subsidies? 😀

They make it very hard to go through their books. And the authorities can only stop you doing stuff that's illegal, not what's immoral, damaging or unfair.

I know fella. He pulled the 'I forgot to take any money out with me' stunt AGAIN the other night. I have never ever ever seen him buy a round. EVER

I'll remember it!!! Weathers good for tomorrow. Rivi start at 5pm?

You gonna remember the cash you owe me too. I've not forgotten you know. It'll only dissapear in your 'weekly new forks ' fund otherwise

Quite a few people suggested at the time that because the pay was so good in the City, the cleverest people went to work there. So the FSA (them supposed to be going thru the books) only had the 2nd cleverest people on hand to look at the books. You can see the problem there can't you!
Plus, the government wanted to spend lots on hospitals and schools, the City was giving them huge amounts of tax. So the government didn't want to tell the City to stop cos then they couldn't have delivered on the things they wanted to deliver on.
Simples, in it's way.
And an accountant friend of mine pointed out at the time of the bailout that as and when the banks were profitable again and share prices high enough, they would be sold back to the private sector at a profit to the taxpayer. Which could help put a nice dent in the deficit. Of course, the government can't announce this publicly in case it never happens. And it may not happen for quite some time, this is still uncharted territory

He pulled the 'I forgot to take any money out with me' stunt AGAIN the other night. I have never ever ever seen him buy a round. EVER

Ah. I know the type. 'I'll make sure I'll sort you out next time, I promise'. Yeah, right… 🙄

What you do next time, is say 'Oh, that's a shame you see, because I want X number of pints, and I've only brought out just enough for that'. Get him a lime and soda or something, and make the bastard nurse it.

hmmm I don't know about the cleverest people going for the pay – the greediest perhaps 😉 More importantly they spend huge amounts on creative accounting which requires a cunning, rather than a clever, mind.

It's a bit like the con that business must be more smarter and more efficient than state owned monopolies 'cos they make profits….

don't know if its quite as simple as flogging the shares off and erasing debt/pocketing profit!
who would take them? china? then much of our banking system gets 'owned' by china.
openly on the markets? the price would swiftly drop once huge volumes go up for sale…..

they can't sell them off at that price though – they'd flood the market and significantly reduce the value of the shares. also as said above who would buy them?!?

the City was giving them huge amounts of tax. So the government didn't want to tell the City to stop cos then they couldn't have delivered on the things they wanted to deliver on.

Surely the reality is more a case of once Thatcher and and her mate slick Ron removed the controls from the Financial sector at the end of the eighties (Predictably overheating the economy so she got re-elected and at the same time precipitating the last recession!), and having completely fecked up anything that looked remotely like manufacturing in this country. It was not going to be possible to reclose the Pandoras box that had been opened whereby our major "export" was financial services.

I can see the reaction now where any government tried to take control of the actions of our only real overseas money earner, to a chorus of accusations from the main beneficiaries of this bizarre action (on the right of the house). Simply put once globalisation had set in it was never possible for the UK alone to reign in the bankers. That is the brilliance of what Brown has achieved in this crisis. A G20 wide approach to dealing with the problem, plus getting the dosh spent back with interest!!

Surely the gov't has some clever accountants who can work out the ideal rate to sell shares at so that they minimise their depressing effect on the share price, whilst minimising the time it takes to sell them off so as to keep interest payments down on the deficit?

The trouble is, no one can call the top of the market with any certainty.

Thatcher and and her mate slick Ron removed the controls from the Financial sector

Bingo! You win the prize for being the first to blame Thatcher!

Yay, so no more deficit then and all this talk of tax rises and public service cuts is b*llox. Can't wait to see this on the news tonight, Gordon saves the UK!

😉

Ah, a paper profit. A bit like all the profit people have made on the houses they live in. The thing is, if they really are raking it in from all the money they spent bailing out the banks, then why do we still have a huge and mounting public sector deficit?

Yeeeeaaahhh!!

March's borrowing took total public sector net debt, including interventions to prop up Britain's financial sector, up to 890 billion pounds or 62 percent of GDP, the highest for a financial year since records began in 1974/75.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100422/tuk-uk-britain-debt-fa6b408.html

Nothing like almost a trillion in public borrowing is there?

So its like Using a Credit card to buy a car then sell the car for less money and say your ahead as you got some money back from it..

Are you guys abit thick? You'd be better off using someone from down the bookies to put bets on the Grand National.

I'd like the Government to turn this 'paper'/notional profit into reality. As soon as the market gets a whiff that the seller kinda needs to sell the share prices will devalue. Especially at those amounts of shares..

Anyone fancy buying my Gold bullion reserves?

I'm no Economics expert but read a bit deeper.

Ahem. The bar's over there, Hora…

So its like Using a Credit card to buy a car then sell the car for less money and say your ahead as you got some money back from it..

Your analogy is accurate, except for the fact that they are getting more for the car than they paid for it, and also that if they hadn't bought the car it would have exploded, destroying the economy. So you're nearly right. 😉

I'm no Economics expert

no sh!t ?

Yeah, I was using the ACTUALLY get back. You still OWE the interest as well. My brother in law used to think he could get more for a car than what it really sold for.

What you value at and what it returns can be two very different things.

Have alot to sell? Its down to confidence and a buyers market then…

Cor, I'm right parched over here… 🙄