Northern Rock has borrowed almost £23bn in emergency funding from the Bank of England, the latest figures from the central bank indicate.
That is roughly £730 for every UK taxpayer, and marks a rise of £2.2bn from the week ended 31 October.

Northern Rock has been in trouble since the global credit crunch hurt its business and led to a run on the bank.

The government has guaranteed all Northern Rock deposits and the bank is now looking at how it will survive.

The problem is that the retail lenders have fled and are continuing to flee, (a City guesstimate £5bn outflow of savings is probably underestimate says Simon Ward of New Star Asset Management in London) borrowers cannot be forced to pay more yet borrowing costs now exceed potential income, (not to mention the horrendous legal / advisory fees the City will be milking)

Surely there can be no other route than administration and an effective nationalisation and run-off of the mortgage book. Continued support by the Government of the Board is absurd if not criminal.

Speaking last week to MPs at a hearing of the Treasury Select Committee, Alastair Darling said there were lessons to be learned from the banking fiasco. He added that Northern Rock could have handled the situation better. "There are certainly great lessons to be learned from the interface of the Bank of England and FSA," he said. "There needs to be clarification between the two bodies about their roles. Clearly there is some overlap between the two."

...and this is the clever structure that the twit who is now Minister of Education, Mr Ed Balls constructed. It failed at the first jump.

The first lesson to learn is to sack the whole Board, call in the Administrators, refund the retail lenders immediately and face the folks who funded Granite and all the other specious SIV's with their criminal schemes which all hung on a slender legal thread that the structure was determined to benefit a charity - the The Down's Syndrome North east who were unaware of their part in this whole fraud.

Britain is the only country in the Western World to have had a real run on a real bank. No more boom and bust eh, when the real bust comes, and its not that far away, it will make the 1930's depression look like a day at the seaside.