Is the banking bailout working?
Updated on 16 October 2008
Concerns grow that the bailouts are not encouraging banks to start lending again, as Swiss giant UBS becomes the latest bank to take a multi-billion dollar bailout.
One of Gordon Brown's key goals in bailing out the banks was to get lending moving again and that just isn't happening.
The Bank of England has just announced a radical new way to support high street banks but there's no sign of the government's desired return to last year's lending levels and whether it will lead to cheaper borrowing for us.
The stock market fell badly when it opened and has recovered a bit - but confidence is still poor.
The FTSE 100 share index in London opened 5 per cent down this morning, after falls last night in New York and Japan, and fears of recession.
Today in Europe in a sign of just how bad things are two once mighty Swiss banks, Credit Suisse and UBS , became the latest banking giants to accept a multi-billion government bail outs.
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