The UK Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter?

By now just about everyone will know about the Northern cRock bank run on Friday and Saturday. I haven't posted till now for fear of merely regurgitating what is already posted in depth all over the freaking internet.

I have been amusing myself with pictures of queues outside branches like the one on the right... well, OK it's a photoshop job just for fun.

The only problem is that there are a lot of folks who won't be thinking the whole situation is funny at all. There will be hundreds of Northern Rock customers who will be having sleepless nights over the weekend, worried about the security of their investments; like the poor old lady below who stood in the queue for hours to get her money out, only to be turned away at closing time by the local constabulary. I feel for them.

Internet customers are having a hell of a time logging on and accessing their accounts amid suspicions that bandwidth has been deliberately restricted to stem the hemorrhaging of funds from the bank.

Of course everybody from the NR CEO, to the press, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is saying that the bank is sound and that people funds are safe. But these parties are not known for telling the truth are they? Depositors obviously feel discretion is the better part of valour and taking their funds elsewhere. I can't say I blame them one iota.

Unquestionably, there is no way that NR can continue in it's current form, so basically the first mortgage lender in the UK will very shortly cease to exist.

That makes me wonder if some enterprising Englishman/woman has kicked off a UK version of
The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, because it might just be the first of many. Sub-prime lending in the UK has been rife and has been hidden by strong price appreciation to date and folks have been able to sell or MEW themselves out of trouble. But with the first month on month falls recorded, those days are over.

Regarding the future of the UK property market, I think there is a sound opinion here in the following video:



No matter what exactly transpires next, (I suspect governments and CBs will desperately try to prop up the boom) The world changed in August and things will be different and harder from now on.