Should we trust Banks with our savings?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7305... QUOTE
" Thornburg Mortgage has said it is trying to raise almost $1bn (拢500m) in extra capital to avert a possible bankruptcy filing."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7305... QUOTE
"The UK's financial watchdog, the FSA, is investigating whether rumours have been deliberately spread to undermine the value of bank shares."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7302... QUOTE
"Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs both saw their profits more than halved in the first quarter of 2008."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7096... QUOTE
"Timeline: Sub-prime losses"

Etc etc etc etc

The obscene part is that the GOVERNMENT will only honour 拢35,000 personal savings if a bank folds and goes into liquidation or freefall..

So if you have sold some property, or have a large legacy, where would you put your money today and not worry about it?

My advice is spead it about but make sure the bank or building society is not part of the same group... as it is only 拢35.000 you will get back ( and not 拢35.000 for each account you hold).

Under my mattress!

Not the big banks.

Bankers are purely salesmen nowadays. My savings goes in a shoe box under the floor boards - away from the banks and the tax man. I think they are a bunch of legalised gangsters. Every time I walk into a bank these days they try to flog me something I didn't even go in there for. I opened an account with a building society only yesterday, just so I could start saving for my son so when he gets to 16, he's get a few bob. It ended up them trying to re-mortgage me, proposing to write my will (for only 120 quid hahahaha), and trying to poach me from my existing bank to there's. I only wanted to deposit 50 quid JEZUS!!!!

If you want to put it into bank accounts, simply put it into a number of them. Most government insurance schemes cover funds up to a certain amount in each account but there is no maximum per person.

I do this routinely when investing in schemes of this type. If you want security, either put it somewhere where it will be insured by the government if the bank fails, or in government bonds themselves.

Banks are only required to hold a tiny amount of money or money-equivalent in their vaults compared to the money that they lend out. Hence, if borrowers default and banks do not get repaid or serviced in volumes that are high enough, the system breaks down. Banks apply something called value at risk to measure how much liquidity they must have any one time to operate smoothly.

Obviously, when sufficiently many borrowers default, banks stop lending to house buyers and even each other, so the market liquidity disappears and people get nervous. Under those circumstances, even if you wanted to get your cash out of the bank you couldn't because... the cash isn't there.

In terms of government intervention I think Northern Rock shows the typical mindset of the high-rollers. Here, the government ensured a payback to all stakeholders: people with deposits, shareholders, institutional lenders and so on.

In my view people that deposit money should be the only people with a call on government intervention. Both shareholders and lenders know that they take on a risk and it can't be right and taxpayers should pay for this risk!

Regardless, your money is never safe with a bank, but it might be safer than keeping it under your pillow where it can be robbed and doesn't earn any interest.

As someone mentioned, make sure that you keep your money fairly spread out. If you've got 10k in cash put half of it with RBS and another half with HSBC. If you want to be 'really' safe and not risk any bankrupcies, put the money into guilds.

Most UK banks are multinational banks with more than a century history as a viable and reliable and well managed banks. They have very strong reserves and bankruptcies is out of the question.
Moreover, their operations and lendings are also controlled and regulated by the Bank of England which has given them the licence to do their banking business.
The central bank as their bankers of last resort, will provide them with liquidity to pay their depositors in an emergency or on demand.
However, the public must have full confidence and trust in them and not listen to unfounded rumours, because this will cause a lot of problems for them to run their business in a proper manner. In a worse scenario is a run in the banks. As banks only keep a small fraction of the money which they had lent out in the course of their business, in their vault.
The bank of England and the FSA must immediately stop those irresponsible rumours and arrest those responsible.