This latest revelation of the woes of The Royal Bank of Scotland and its corruption makes it obvious the economy is going to take a MASSIVE hit if Ive understood even half of it ! (Unless of course its propaganda by RT!) RBS owes vast amounts of billions it cant pay back , and guess who will have to pay ! A guy who lost his company to GRG ,( subsiduary of RBS who strips assets and sells on) , is leading an international class action against them which involves many countries ,and is said to involve amounts which will even dwarf BREXIT figures ! How bad IS this really ? Are we on our way to being Greece or worse? RBS hasnt even paid its dues to America for the 2008 problems , so if you add the 2018 stuff , its going to be mind boggling.

Duly Boggled

Only if its true Habdab. The RBS saga has gone on so long now , Ive not really been following it that much, just sketchily really . I thought it was due to make profits anytime soon . The implication today was that our Govt has deliberately and thoroughly kept under wraps the seriousness of the position Looks like far from behaving after 2008 , RBS and its sidekicks have just got worse , and all the companies across Germany, US , Italy etc who have been hurt, are now gunning for them bigtime.

This is what I watched today. https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/422961-scotland-bank-economic-taxpayer/

Well it will be blamed on Tories Brexit and Corbyn

Its the inevitable end result of capitalism, free market economy and globalisation. There is not a single "clean" high street bank.

Any business that runs a long term high debt model will always be at risk of being asset stripped. What is more annoying is the large companies who have structured their assets is such a way that they can still make profits while other parts of the business are going bankrupt and leaving many others in debt, this is like a one-way valve that allows them to access profits and "lose" debts.

How serious do you see it DD ? Is the country going to be hammered once all the claims (presumably successful ) are in ? Also , is RBS going to be another Northern Rock - not that Ive any money in there .

I wonder if Soros and cronies are behind all this ? Aim to bring Govt down , or UK even? We only see the tip , if that of what is REALLY going on .Seems so orchestrated .

As far as I'm aware there is no legal obligation for the Government to bail out the bank, we are only shareholders the same as any other shareholder. Personally I think its time to cut our losses, our current shareholding is "only" about £21bn I think but we have it on paper as an asset much greater than that. There must be a way to put some package together to help others that are caught up in this mess .... but of course our membership of the EU means we aren't allowed to do things like that, the EU controls our finances!

The bank supposedly has assets of something like £713bn (yet a company value of circa £30bn????), I guess most of these are only paper assets. Why not asset strip the bank so at least some parts of it do some good with minimum damage, the damaged parts are never going to recover and can only take the rest down with them.

Its time to go back to having a proper state bank and local council loans.

But to answer your question, yes this is disastrous, whatever happens it is going to hugely affect UK finance for the next 10+ years. At some point it needs sorting and it might as well be now, its never going to fix itself, bailing them out in the way they did in the first place was stupid, we should have secured loans against their known good assets and gone from there.

From day one of the bailout it was obviously not going to work when they used some of the bailout money to award themselves £1bn of bonuses despite being a totally totally failed company.

The Giro was originally intended to be a state bank. The threat of one honest bank to all the rest was so great that it had to be killed off.

Thatcher was, of course, happy to comply.

Perhaps a combination of blockchain technology and crowdfunding will do the same job. One interesting side effect of this is that without bankers to introduce new money into the economy, the government will have to do it by printing vastly more. If nothing else this demonstrates the sheer folly of 'austerity' as a policy and the obvious stupidity to run a country like a business or a domestic budget.

Those stunned at the idea that banks are allowed to 'invent' new money - in effect printing it - may like to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation for a start. There are lots more sites that explain it too.

Had to look up blockchain technology - never heard of it. but it appears to be a simultaneous sharing of new technology whilst deals etc are being done, which keeps all parties in the loop so to speak , meaning theres far less scope for deceit and corruption . This sounds great - but as you commented about the Giro bank , will it be buried by those who will lose out , or is the technology too advanced now to be stopped?

Neil Mitchell has said yesterday that despite all the evidence his group have accumulated , he doesnt believe the establishment will allow RBS to fail and is desperate to have his interview with RT go viral so our Govt cant ignore the truth. He's been tweeting to Mr Trump too, poking him how so many US firms have been 'had' too . I suppose it depends whether its in Trumps interests whether he takes this up or not since he has fingers in so many economic pies himself.

Nothing mentioned on UK news about this RT interview , Mrs May has not responded to the letter from Mitchel revealing all the new evidence . Poisoned dwarf wouldnt be happy to lose that many jobs in Scotland so shes not going to support screwing RBS or bring it up . What a good job we have been given Antisemiticgate to concentrate on .

That’s an optimistic view of block chain technology. It used for nefarious currencies such as bitcoin.

So far from making banking and other important transactions less open to corruption- you mean an even bigger smarter fox is waiting in the wings to guard the hen house ---great I feel much better about our future now.

Hard to see how governments can do much to stop blockchain technology. The choice of what currency people believe in is the people's, not the governments. Lots of countries use US dollars rather than their own currency despite the disapproval of their own government.

I think the banks are getting worried about blockchain. It is not under their control either and could take a lot of trade from them. A number of them have come out and tried to frighten people off by claiming its a bubble. It certainly is at the moment, but it is no less so than any other currency and will settle down if it is widely adopted as a money rather than a risky investment.

As a form of currency that supports undeniable untraceable transactions, it is just like cash, but without its problems of bulk, vulnerability and forgery it seems to be an improvement on banks and their version of electronic money - debit and credit cards etc and is a lot cheaper. The banks are right to be scared of it.

As to DD's point about it being used for drugs and other nefarious activities, of course it is. But so is cash!

For the record, I have invested nothing except my curiosity in any blockchain based currency. It is too volatile at the moment, and I am not a gambler. When it settles down into a serious currency I most certainly will, however. I trust the mathematics underpinning it much more than I trust the likes of our piss-poor government and banks who control our money at present. We can expect, by the way, for a thumping devaluation in the pound as a result of brexit and it is probably not a bad idea to buy some Euros before it happens.

The main thing about money is it can't really be created, if someone makes a profit, someone else makes a loss. It may be in a very indirect route but its bound to happen.

Bitcoin etc is always a massive gamble compounded with its similarity to a pyramid scheme. Yes, a LOT of money has been made out of bitcoin but also a lot of money has been lost. In the future, bitcoin is inevitably going to crash. At its peak, the total value of bitcoins were around $325tn, at the moment those same bitcoins are worth about $120tn, that is how much it has fallen in less than 4 months.

Its unregulated, its unsafe. Its fine for gambling a small portion of your savings but if you use it for all your savings you are taking a huge risk. Its value has changed by over 20% in one day on occasions, great if its in your favour but you might as well toss a coin.

Total nonsense!

If you go to the bank for a £1,000, loan, the bank DOESN'T use funds deposited there by me or anyone else. They can't. They loan far more than they receive in deposits. What they do is to invent £1,000 in your account. If there was a trillion pounds in circulation in the country before this transaction, there will be one trillion and one thousand pounds in circulation after the transaction. They have created it.

Banks account for - I think - 97% of new money introduced, but governments always spend more than they take in in taxes too. They have to. Population rises and we generally grow richer. If the amount of money stayed the same it would become more valuable and you could buy more with it. This is called deflation, and although it seems like a good bet for you and me, it turns out to be a disaster because why should anyone invest in a new venture when by hanging on to their cash they can become richer without any risk. The result is growth comes to a grinding halt!

This is why the government aims for an inflation rate of a couple of percent. Enough to encourage investment but not enough to cause real hardship (allegedly).

People tend to think money obeys rules like energy or momentum, but in fact it is a pure human invention and we can do what we like with it. Well, governments can. You and I cannot invent more money for instance. Governments do not have to obey the same rules as you and I and Mr Micawber do. They PRETEND to of course in order to persuade you and me that they are 'good managers' but their view of money is quite different from the rules you and I have to follow. But it is important to remember that running a country and controlling the money supply is a totally different job from running a company. It is absolute folly to try to 'balance the books' the way Osborne and the present clown are trying to do. The result for the country will be even more disastrous than what they have 'achieved' so far.