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Taxpayers and Northern Rock

The National Audit Office has just published a report on the Northern Rock.  The NAO estimates that the ultimate cost  to taxpayers of bailing out the Northern Rock will be £2 billion.  That comes to £67 for each of the 29.7 million taxpayers in the UK.  Of course, this cost ignores other "taxes" such as the higher inflation due to quantitative easing.

£67 doesn't sound like much, but Northern Rock was a small bank compared to RBS, Lloyds-TSB and HBOS, the three big banks which failed in 2008.  In terms of deposits, these three banks, taken as a whole, were 27 times larger than Northern Rock.  

     

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