I had thought that the Lloyds TSB/HBOS deal was going to be one of the all-time greats, but HBOS ain't so good now and I'm damned if I can see why existing Lloyds shareholders should forego dividends until the HBOS preference shares are paid off. Let's all vote out of it and stay free like Barclays!

Geoffrey Woollard, Cambridge, England

ah, we're back to social contracts,or were they compacts, are we?

peter c, Devizes, Wessex

Don't worry, Tim, old sport - British banks always were much better at collusion than competition.

Adam Addis, Lancaster, UK

Excellent article - at last someone telling it like it is - a story of incompetence and poor judgement by King and the Government which has ruined London's reputation for banking and safe investment. The long term damage is immense-even if the Tories get in investors will fear the return of Labour.

David, London,

Richard, Chichester, West Sussex
People seem to forget conveniently when Brown became the chancellor of exchequor in 1997, he established the so called 'three way' framework, BOE+FSA +Treasury was supposed to do proactive regulation and monitoring . No use in blaming any one else but BROWN .

Julian, LONDON, UK

The "S" in HBOS and RBS means one thing : Scotland.

Kev S, Hertford, UK

When Brown and Darling confiscated Northern Rock they said that shareholder compensation would be calculated on the presumption that the government had suddenly called in its loan and the bank had gone bust.
Are they planning the same trick with the big banks?

Ron Entwistle, Cambridge, UK

Well said. Mr King is the worst head for Bank of England in its history. A more competent head in his position would be able to help most British banks to survive the crisis rather than been nationalised. He destroyed the British banking industry, and brought us a deeper recession than others.

Mark, Birmingham, UK

Is it Nationalisation or is it monoploisation ? A monopoly kills competition. Maybe they'll make a board game out of it.

Santanu, Warren, USA

The BoE seems to have made far more liquidity available than the FRB relatively and any analysis of the banking assets of some would show impairment of an extent that depleted all equity capital for some.
The Goodwins, Hornbys etc seem the problem not King.

Damian, Brighton, UK

So my suspicions that this is no more than an attempt to enact Clause 4 are correct.

Sue Doughty, Twyford, UK

The banks (& shareholders) played with fire and got their fingers burnt.

"greedy, naughty bankers" emmigrate - good riddance.

House price bubble NOT due to low BofE interest rates as rates have been cut by 0.5% but mortgage rates have not: bubble due to poor risk assessment by lenders.

Dave, Canterbury, UK

Surely this all stems from Thatchers day when the mortgage payments were kept off the RPI that the BOE had to keep below 2%. if it had inflation would have shown as higher and therefore there would have been higher interest rates. Keeping house prices lower.etc,etc, Higher rates for savings,etc,ect

Richard, Chichester, West Sussex

Nationalisation just levels the international playing field. Russia, China etc. keep a VERY tight reign on matters of "national security" such as finances, energy, infrastructure- resulting in unfair competition when they do business here or we over there.

Nick, London,

The share price is variable my deposits are not. If shareholders want to encourage their executives to get big returns, then they should be prepared for the rough. If they affect my "safe" deposit then I welcome the gov's intervention as I am sure millions of others do.

Jimd, Norwich, uk

Mervyn King has been an unmitigated disaster at the Bank of England. Wrong man, wrong place, wrong time. The Bank of England as lender of last resort is the foundation of a stable banking system. Failure to fulfil that role in a timely manner for NRK led directly to this financial tsunami.

William, Edinburgh, Scotland

what load of politically motivated nonsense! The bailout is imperative and is set up to ease the current mkt turmoil. The plan has worked in easing the market after the US and rest of the world found out that Lehman was too big to fail. Without this plan, the UK would suffer a much worse recession.

Nick, London,

objectively correct & a good article. Labour again have dabbled in matters they dont understand. the price will be even higher as a result both financial & social

tim, warwick,

It's time to remove independence of the Bank of England as an emergency measure. Clearly their inflation "nutters" attitude and their slow response and total detachment from real world (except for Mr Blanchflower) is largely to blame to what happened to UK banks. Mervyn King should resign.

mac, Manchester, UK

How about Britain's "financial space to manoeuvre"?

Who ever wins the election: the brace / corsett will be very very tight.

Peter, Berlin, Germany

At least the bankers are "talented" enough to make Gordon pay up by squeezing us the hapless Tax Payers. Alas, we the phlebs who are the tax payer get the governments and prime ministers we deserve!

raj, harrow, uk

Lloyds TSB has been prudently managed and is solvent even by current stress-tested standards. The bank's chairman foolishly agreed to Gordon Brown's proposal to take over HBOS and is now saddled with that bank's liabilities. Lloyds TSB's shareholders are to be punished for other's mistakes.

John Fitzgerald, Teddington,

Its wrong to assume that the fate of international financial services is tied to service providers. British Banks may fall, but British thought can still guide Int. Finance. Even if BoE could, should it have lent cheaply? It would have meant robbing from the value creators as asset values are myth.

Suhasini Sakhare, London, UK

Tim, its the "competitiveness" of British banks that got us, the taxpayers, into this mess in the first place. RBS chief Goodwin would not even say sorry for botching up his job. And its not banks money, its the depositors money that has been gambled and lost. I hope that you understand that.

John Taylor, London,

So you are arguing that Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley were viable well managed operations and the BOE should just have given them as much money as they wanted, no strings attached?

Glen, Melbourne,

Just when the Chinese, Indonesian, Indian and Russian economies are moving out of the era of 'state banks' otherwise solvent institutions are dragged back under the socialist yoke in the United Kingdom. Cameron and Osborne need to speak up and be heard and not meekly agree with Browns socialist plot

Neil Johnson, Singapore, Singapore

1677 it says over the doors -- it took 331 years to create the value in Lloyds Bank. It took Gordon Brown and SirVictor Blank one meeting to destroy it.

Lloyds is now blighted by HBOS.

It will not survive any more of Gordon Brown's rescues.

David Moss, London, UK

Soros and Buffet only invest in businesses they understand-it seems to work for them...

The Treasury investing in the Banks seems to contradict this.

I totally agree that the old arrangement whereby the BOE was the last resort worked well enough. Northern rock would never have happened........

John Emsley, Meillac, France

Members of 'talented' bank excecutives club, just move to another executive job and get more reward for failure.

Dave, Preston, UK

I thought the government made vast amounts available and there were no takers, or at least, it had no effect.

Neil Murphy, Cromer ,

Errm, as these so 'talented' bank excecutives have poisoned the worlds financial systems with their toxic investment packages, where are they going to go, and who would want them?

mark collins, reigate, uk