The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, was so concerned about the health of the world's banks in March 2008 that he plotted a secret bailout of the system using funds from cash-rich nations, according to a US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.

Six months before the world financial crisis reached its peak, forcing taxpayers to rescue collapsing financial institutions, King told US officials in London that the UK, US, Switzerland and Japan could jointly enable a multibillion-pound cash injection into global banks, overriding the "dysfunctional" G7 nations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... nk-bailout

The more I read of the Wikileaks cables, the more I wonder did they do the right thing in releasing them all at once, instead of drip-feeding them to the press to maximise impact

It does make me think why did he allow the bank takeovers during the crisis? If he knew enough to plan a rescue fund why allow the take over that has laid low Lloyds TSB?

at the time, the money men were making money
the rest of us will still have to pay the piper ...

They might have been making money but I did have concerns about the shrinking competition in the banking market.

Funny how the FSA report isn't being released to the public as well, apparently it doesn't add anything to our understanding of the situation.....

I think I'd like to be the judge of that seeing as we're all paying for the mess.

I think that the report would show that there is massive fraud within the banking system and that the politicians basically covered it all up. That would not look good come for any of them.

Even more reason for it to be out in public, then.

I have no faith in government reports about the bank sector at the moment. The ECB bank stress tests cleared Allied Irish and they are currently haemorrhaging money and close to bankruptcy. Nothing changed. The banks here have made lots of loans that really should not have been made and the quality of collateral is non existent. Gordon's basic plan was sound but he really should have broken up any bank that needed support. Support should come at a very high price.