Attention people of England - get your money out of buy-to-let f*cked lender Bradford & Bingley today. Seriously, get in the queue and get it out NOW

At one point the governments of the US and UK will need to draw a line in the sand and say "no, we're not bailing you out".

Bear Stearns? Sure, no prob.

Northern Rock? One time, never again.

Wells Fargo? Probably.

IndyMac? Are you kidding me?

Bradford & Bingley? No chance.

The US has FDIC protection. The UK has anarchy. And any saver stupid enough to have more than £33,000 in Bradford & Bingley is a fool.

The crazed buy-to-let Ponzi Scheme in Great Britain is about to blow up something fierce.

Get your popcorn.

Bank denies cash-raising reports

Bradford & Bingley has denied reports that it is planning to go to the market to raise extra cash to see it through the credit crisis. Sunday papers said Citigroup had been asked to help with a rights issue to raise hundreds of millions of pounds.

But a statement from the bank said that it had a strong capital base and, "had funded its business activities through 2008 and into 2009". Bradford & Bingley is Britain's biggest buy-to-let lender.

Is your bank ready for a run? Could it fail? Are you FDIC insured on your accounts? Are you certain?

Want to do a little test? For anyone who has $50,000 or more in a branch bank, go stop by tomorrow and ask to withdraw your entire balance - in cash, right there on the spot.

See what they say.

You may be surprised.

Now assume EVERY account holder in the area tried to do that tomorrow - perhaps after news that the bank might be one of the ones about to fail.

It wouldn't be pretty.

Here's a posting from an HP'er who did the test today:

Anonymous said...

I went to the bank today to withdraw about $10,000 in cash. The bank was so low on cash they could barely give me my 10k.

At that point I asked if I could withdraw my entire balance (around 50k) in cash. I just wanted to see if they could. Sure enough they could not. Evidently they've had many people all day long pulling their cash out of the bank.

Freaking scary.