Least we forget.....

...the UK is still mired in the greatest financial crisis in a century.

It is one of the intended benefits of a corrupt legislature. While voters are distracted by MPs expenses, the financial system continues to throw up huge liabilities that will end up on the public sector balance sheet.

So, the bailout continues; this time it is the turn of the building societies. From today's Times...

A RESCUE operation to save one of Britain’s biggest building societies is under way in the first of a new series of expected bailouts in the sector.

West Bromwich building society, which celebrated its 160th anniversary this year, has a loan book worth almost £10 billion. It is being secretly offered to potential white-knight bidders by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the City regulator.

Coventry and Yorkshire building societies are both in talks with the regulator on a possible takeover of their struggling rival. If no deal can be agreed the worst parts of its loan book are likely to be nationalised, with its 47 branches and 530,000 customers passed to another society. The move follows stringent new stress tests being imposed on the sector by the FSA.