Top Stories: Gordon Brown launches our biggest financial bail-out package

By Bob Roberts and Clinton Manning 9/10/2008 Gordon Brown yesterday launched an astonishingly bold £500billion bank bail-out - as the world's banks slashed interest rates. Under the biggest financial rescue plan in British history the government will buy £50billion worth of shares in high street banks in a partial privatisation. The Bank of England will also offer them £200billion in loans to improve cash flow. And the government will guarantee to underwrite around £250billion of bank debts if any of the main players go under to improve confidence in the market. Analysts barely had time to come to terms with the almost unfathomable amounts of money involved when the Bank of England announced a surprise 0.5 per cent cut in interest rates to 4.5 per cent. The cut was part of an historic coordinated rate reduction by central... [read full story]