All entries for Wednesday 08 October 2008

Crunch time.

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7658417.stm

Money, get away. Get a good job with good pay and you're OK. Money, it's a gas. Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. But don't entrust it to a bunch of incompetent pseudo scandanavian gamblers playing at being a Bank because they'll lose it.

I went to Iceland once. The country, not the frozen food retailer patronage of which would only encourage them to keep putting Kerry Katona on television. I was only there for about an hour awaiting a connecting flight but some of my money has been in Iceland for the last several years by way of Icesave and now it seems like it's not coming back agin. It turns out that Icesave's parent company Landsbanki is run by people of similar financial competence to the aforementioned (recently declared bankrupt for not being able to pay her tax bill) Kerry Katona. Whilst Icesave's website still allows me to see how much of my money I've given them, it won't let me have any it back. 

In theory my currently inaccessible money is covered by an Icelandic based composition scheme, though if Alistair Darling is to be believed said scheme "hasn't got any money in it" and the Icelandics aren't inclined to cough up. Instead Mr Darling says the UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme is going to give me it back at some point. So it looks like I and the other ~300,000 UK residents who made the mistake of entrusting our money to Icesave will be fine, though I rather doubt I'll see the nine months worth of interest that the Icelandic (cockney rhyming slang translation of) bankers owe me.

I was listening to the radio earlier and people were being asked what they thought about the plans announced today to bail out UK banks should they need it. Some people were saying they thought that the banks should have to look after themselves and the government shouldn't be offering to bail them out. I suspect their opinion would change if the bank they'd entrusted with their savings collapsed.

Comments containing puns about frozen assets will be deleted unless they are particularly humorous.

Mike Willis : 08 Oct 2008 19:42 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem