Dunfermline Building Society, Scotland’s largest building society, which has been struggling to keep running in the past few weeks, has finally gone bust today.
Although the Dunfermline are yet to update their website with any details of how this will affect its customers, the Government seems to be indicating that savers with up to £50,000 will not lose any of their money.
If you happen to have a minimum of £30,000 sloshing around earning a pitiful interest rate in the bank, then a new service might find you a better return.
Following the collapse of the Icelandic banks a few months ago, there seemed to be a trend towards British savers pulling their money back home, to give themselves peace of mind that their money was guaranteed under the government’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
There’s been a lot of talk about quantitative easing today, following the news that the Bank of England (BoE) will be using it in an attempt to help the economy (along with interest rate cuts). But what is it?
You’d have thought that with banks being bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds of tax payers money, then the bank charge court case which has now been going on for what seems like centuries would be sorted without any further obstruction.
According to the BBC, the humble cheque hits 350 years old today, and despite a gradual decline in use, is unlikely to completely disappear for quite a few years to come.
The recent bonuses paid to employees of nationalised (and part-nationalised) banks have really got up some people’s noses, so much so that there is now a petition you can sign to ask the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to prevent bonuses or over-inflation salary increases being paid to employees of banks where the government now has a majority shareholding.
I’ve got very mixed feelings about the news that many Northern Rock staff will wake up to a big fat bonus in their bank accounts tomorrow morning.
Natwest / Royal Bank of Scotland have recently been plugging their new “impartial advice service”, MoneySense, which is currently available in over 1,000 of their branches.
The Bank of England has cut interest rates by 1.5%, down to 3%, the lowest level since 1955.