英伦广角 2011-10-29 英国银行被降级（打印版）

These ratings agencies, they have a lot of clout, don't they? I mean they're not official organizations or companies like any other, but what they say carries a lot of weight. Yeah, I mean they face a lot criticism at the hight of the financial crisis for not spotting the risks in the system before everything went wrong. And since then, they've been criticized for saying just this type of bad things, and you know, creating new fear within the system. That's said their job is to alert investors as to the credit worthiness of people that they're lending to. And what they are saying now about these 12 UK banks is that they are not so much at any greater risk now of going under than they were well yesterday before they issued this warning or last week or two weeks ago. What they are saying is they now see that the UK government is less likely to stand behind them if they do get into trouble, and that's why they've issued this downgrade. They've perhaps seen a likelihood, perhaps that if a small bank were to get into trouble, look like it was going under, the government would not step in, in the same way as it did for Northern Rock, for Bradford & Bingley, at the height of crisis, and rescue them. And if you are a private investor or a bond holder, somebody who lends money to these banks, if it dose go under, chances are , there is a greater chance now, you can lose your money.

And practically, if you've got some RBS shares, and in a sense we all have 'cause we are taxpayers and 70% of RBS is owned by the taxpayer. What difference does this downgrade mean? And would this make any difference at all practically?

And, well, obviously, we've seen RBS shares drop on foot of this news. It's not to say they won't pick up again in the weeks to come. Overall, I think what it means for RBS is that it may find it slightly more difficult, potentially more expensive to get funding, the funding it needs to continue operating as a normal bank. It should loan to all of us. That's said, I mean, you look at the development yesterday, from the Bank of England, quantitative easing, one of the aims is that it's not only to inject more money into the system, but to bring down the cost of borrowing overall, so, it's a bit of yin & yang(阴阳). I don't think we can say that the downgrade today means that we are gonna be paying more for our loans in the very near future, but it all fits into our feeds, into a very complicated mixture, and a complicated recipe, to get the banks out of the bad situation that they are now in.

英伦广角 2011-10-29 英国银行被降级（在线收听）