js.b1 wrote
harryagain wrote

I wonder how safe your money is in Santander these days?

There are two schools of thought; the gov't permitted fiction, the
reality.

The gov't permitted fiction for USA UK Spain etc banks is that
emergency accounting changes permitted Balance Sheets to suspend Mark-
to-Market. This in turn means that any bank can fiddle the "Stress
Tests". This is all about preventing cascading bank bailouts, run on
banks and absolute financial collapse.

The reality is the market knows banks are not particularly well
capitalised, recovery of substance is elusive, so losses have to be
realised in a waterfall fashion. Essentially Germany knows the system
is stuffed, it is a case of 1) pouring a concrete floor under the bank
losses via fiddling accounts and 2) letting losses be occured &
recapitalise repeatedly over a decade.

The political reality is actually more important than the financial
nonsense.

People will only vote for a certain amount of "hardship" per unit
time, in effect voting themselves benefits into perpetuity - which
clashes with eventual need for financial balance. Thus eventually the
system will fail, because it has to. No gov't can do that which is
necessary, because it would never see office again. Ironically it will
be other countries gov't that eventually force a solution when their
political & economic cost is too great.

I think it is 10yrs for a credit bubble to resolve, but in the
meantime they want housing to continue as before - because without a
Housing-ATM & Housing-Consumerism there is no economy. We lost it,
regaining it is via declining labour rates but that misses the problem
of simply too many people for the global economy. Insufficient job
creation to meet birth rate, which will result in a standard of living
shear at some point, and unsustainable benefit & public sector bill.

That doesn't explain why the US unemployment rate bottomed at
4.x% with an immense legal and illegal immigration rate and the
participation rate at an all time historic high, just before the clowns
were allowed to completely implode the world world financial
system again.

For liquidity reasons, do use multiple banks - borrowing large sums
for a few months is not cheap if you are waiting for a payout. This is
particularly true where the money may be needed at short notice.