castanyes blaves

As I said this morning, this is not a bank rescue plan. But if it had been, it would have failed miserably. Barclays' share price has fallen again today. At the current price of 90p, this bank's entire market value is £7.5bn. And remember, this is a bank that said on Friday night that its profits for 2008 were considerably more than £5.3bn. In other words, investors currently value this giant international bank at a little over one year's profits. Which is little short of extraordinary. And let's not even mention that Royal Bank of Scotland's shares are down by more than 50%, on the supposedly reassuring news that taxpayers will be sharing in its future pain. Confidence has drained from the banking system. And to state the obvious, today's myriad announcements from the Treasury have not succeeded in rebuilding that confidence, which is so vital to a functioning economy.