What ever happened to moral hazard? The idea of bailing out these idiots in the city sickens me. I bet they can not believe their luck in bullying the spinless Mr King into saving their bacon. I just don't get any of this anymore.

Chris Eaces, Chipping N,

After seeing this, why would anyone ever save again. The message is one of lend recklessly and then use inflation to wipe out prudent people's savings.

david webb, bournemouth, uk

Is this why the pound is weakening against the Euro? Traders abroad belive that to live up to the pomp and circumstance of financial whizz, the BoE will start printing off more money to 'give' to commercial and private banks to help them through their own creation of bad times. However this will make British products cheaper in the Eurozone and could reignite our exports much as America has been doing by devaluing their currency. They were clever/lucky enough to have done this in times of prosperity and their handling of substantially cheaper credit will give us an indication.

As we already have the threat of rising inflation due to energy and food costs I believe this action may be too late and we may have to weather a long and bumpy storm. Buy Euros for safety and hope your savings account doesn't go under, these accounts should be the ones the BoE underwrites. Credit is taken on risk and the appropriate fallout should come with bad lending products.

Alistair Kipling, Birmingham,

I remember a mantra of years ago that if 'you were too big you would not be allowed to go bust' That is clearly what is happening here in grand style. And what good sense it makes. Forget who's to blame, just fix this thing before we all go back to the stone age and people start putting their money under the matress. Some thing must be done in the future however to address the problems of these huge bonuses and pay checks for these bankers. I feel this is at the heart of the problem and has encouraged bankers to gamble with money on such a huge scale. After all money has now been reduced in vlaue to just the 'click of a button.'

David Nammory, Liverpool,

I presume that one of the conditions of the bailout will be that the banks must pass on in full and immediately any interest rate reductions....

david, london,

Funny old world we live in. Bank rate comes down and the cost of borrowing by ordinary members of the public goes up by twice the rate of the cut.

Funny too, those wonderful 'economies of scale' so convincingly promised in the sixties, seventies and eighties have left us with incredibly low levels of service from the banks.

Funny how borrowing costs that are based not on individual credit experience but on computer generated generalisations have led to the lenders forgetting how to do their jobs, or even what thier job was!

Thank heavens we Brits have such a great sense of humour.

David J, Winchester, UK

Logically, if an institution is too big for society to allow it to fail then it should be owned by the state......

TF, london,

This is terrible news, but as I suspected the government is willing to do anything to try and keep the housing bubble inflated. This will only help those who have borrowed recklessly and of course property investors. However, new labour believe that everyone who owns a property will vote against them if prices fall. Mr Brown has a habit of selling low (our gold) and buying high (unsound mortgage securities / Northern Rock)...utter incompetence for a so call economic miracle worker.

A Harris, Kettering, UK

If an industrial or commercial business makes a bad decision then it has nobody to blame or bail it out except the creditors, admnistrators or the liquidator. The banksa and financial institutions created the ogre of CDO. They must live with the consequence. If they cannot afford them now sell them in the market to one who can and take the loss. If the loss forces closure then that is good since it the removal of an imprudent institution for the common good. It should not be the function of central banks and government to use our money to chase bad money. Another point is that since mortgages are sold into CDOs who is the mortgagor in possession? This needs to be tested in the courts. It has been in the US and the result has been people keeping their homes since the mortgagor could not be identified. Interesting that people who might be homeless may in fact be able to keep their house and reduce the outgoings by negotiating with the apparent mortgaor for a new loan.

Patrick, Taipei, Taiwan

To all those who are now so indecently referring to 'incentive', 'competition' and the like as 'greed', you really just need to try harder. Remember: "Failure means moral impoverishment!"

John, Constance,

Credit inflation will bring no comfortable result!

huang, beijing, china

So Mr King is to cave in and cut interest rates, maybe
Money should be treated like a commodity, if commodity is in sort supply, its cost goes up. Hence the cost of borrowing goes up.
What we do not want is the Goverment printing presses working overtime, creating lots of paper money, along with lots of inflation, Robbing people who save the value of their savings.
So house prices fall, if you only have one house you are no worse off. Plus you have had a good run only paying 4-5% on borrowed money with house inflation of 20-25%.
Acept a rise in %, and give new comers to the housing market a chance to save and for their earnings to catch up.
It will also help the 30% plus of the population who live on fixed incomes and savings.
So why bail out greedy Investment Bankers, Hedge Funds and other speculators. They have had their profits/bonus's.
Punish them and lets get back to low inflation and sound money

P F Mills, Hull, England

if the taxpayer is being asked to pay the cost of banks' overly greedy trading, then individual bankers should be made to pay a personal cost. it was greed for bonuses that drove the overly aggressive selling of these instruments, so the government should insist that all investment banking personal bonuses are repaid and any profits on share options re-paid as a pre-condition to any bail out.

stephen, china, china