The UK bailout plan doesn't appear to be working any better than ours
and they are tyring changes. See Bloomberg here yesterday:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the U.K. is working on the "second stage" of a bank rescue ...banks remain reluctant to lend even after tapping into a 50 billion-pound ($74 billion) government program to bolster their capital. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is considering credit guarantees for households and companies to encourage loans, a person familiar with the plan said this week...
Also this Bloomberg piece for more detall and The Wall Street Journal today "U.K. Weighs Revamp of Bailout", if you have a subscription.
Meanwhile there was interesting Germany v. U.K bickering:
....EU's 27 nations approved on Friday a coordinated call for fiscal-stimulus packages of around 1.5% of the bloc's gross-domestic product, or about €200 billion ($267 billion). The language they used, however, was vague enough to permit countries to do more or less.
Germany has proposed a stimulus package that would pump around €4 billion ($5.3 billion) into the economy over the next year. Meanwhile the U.K. plans about £20 billion ($30 billion) in stimulus by 2010, including short-term tax cuts.
"All this will do is raise Britain's debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off," German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück said in an interview with Newsweek. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown dismissed the comments, saying they reflected internal German politics.
Friday's EU agreement won't force Germany to expand its stimulus package....
