Put it like this.
It would be a bit like me bailing you out of a hole by buying your house from you. In the short term, well, you'd have some capital. But in the long term, I've got your house. And since, long term, property and shares always increase in value, in the long term, I've got the better deal. The much better deal.

The government won't sell the shares they got in the "bailout" in near future because they want to at least pretend to retain some control over the banks, and by sitting as major shareholders, they can do that. But if they did sell they would wipe out a major part of our current deficit. The ToryDems of course won't admit that, because it was a Labour plan, so they can't say it was anything other than shit.

In general, people seem to have this idea that these big nasty evil banks just do what they want and pull the strings of the government, but having seen it a little from the other side, you need to be up fucking early in the morning to get one over the Treasury. Even if you are RBS.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 8:57, Reply)