RBS, the largely-nationalised bank, is thought to have the biggest exposure with more than £50 billion of outstanding loans.
Amid the growing fears that an Irish collapse could have a serious knock-on effect in this country, Mr Osborne said that the Treasury was considering all options for financial aid.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/8141618/British-banks-have-140-billion-exposure-to-Irelands-economic-crisis.html


This is the real reason for the Irish bail out.

If Ireland is fundamentally incapable of paying off all it owes - which is equivalent to an oppressive 700% of GDP when banking, public sector and private sector debts are added together -some will say it is grotesquely unfair that the cost should fall entirely on taxpayers in Ireland, the European Union and (if IMF money is drawn) the rest of the world.

What would then be triggered would be enormous payments by underwriters of credit default swaps (CDSs), the debt insurance contracts taken out by lenders and speculators. These payments would generate enormous losses for the financial institutions, including banks, which provided the CDS cover.

Even without the CDS loss multiplier, the impact of debt haircuts would be painful for British and international banks. According to the Bank for International Settlements, total lending of non-Irish banks to Irish banks is around $170bn, of which British banks provided $42bn, German banks provided $46bn, US banks $25bn and French banks $21bn.

Which British banks are at risk? Well according to new research by Morgan Stanley, total lending to Ireland’s private and public sectors is equivalent to 92.3% of the net assets of Denmark’s Danske Bank, 89.5% of Royal Bank of Scotland’s net assets, 60.2% of Lloyds’ net assets and 15.9% of Barclays’ net assets. Those figures exclude bank-to-bank lending, but they indicate how exposed Britain’s banks are to Ireland’s woes (RBS is most exposed, as the owner of a substantial Irish bank, Ulster Bank).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... nt_fo.html

banks and bankers are going to bring us to are knees
and this is only the start
PIIGS, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain are all in the same boat

here may lie the beginning of the end for the €uro ...

Complete this joke without resorting to stereotyping:

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bank…

banks and bankers are going to bring us to are knees

No, they've already done that, now they're kicking sand in our faces.