Monday, September 29, 2008

The day our banking system collapsed?

In the background, I'm listening to the debate in the US about their $700 billion bank bail-out.

My news inbox has details of the Bradford & Bingley nationalisation; Fortis, who only last year were throwing cash around to buy ABN Amro, has needed to be bailed out by governments of three different countries; Germany's Hypo Real Estate was saved by a consortium of German organisations, including the Deutsche Bundesbank.

Iceland's third biggest bank, Glitnir, has been taken over by the national government, while America's Wachovia have been bought out by Citigroup.

Will today be remembered as the day our banking system collapsed, or the day in which government intervention on a massive scale finally turned it round?

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