Northern Rock's Back in the News.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the story Northern Rock is a small parochial bank operating out of Newcastle, UK. It's puny share of the national saving and loan markets meant that it's normal day to day operation would have little impact on the UK economy let alone the global one.

It's one moment of fame came last year when the bigger, stronger and better banks decided that they were no longer going to lend it any more money because it's rather poorly conceived structure meant it wasn't really cutting the mustard. At any other point in time this would not be noteworthy because a couple of people would have lost some of their savings, a few jobs would have been lost and few mortgages would have been sold on to more competent lenders.

Luckily for Northern Rock though this event coincided with the start of the start of the global financial crisis meaning that the bank got it's 15 minutes of undeserved fame as the UK government were forced to prop it up with an unfeasibly large cash payment in order to maintain confidence in a system which clearly wasn't working.

Now almost twelve months into it's nationalised status and un-competitive business practices Northern Rock has still yet to produce anything even vaguely resembling a viable return and has in fact managed to lose another £585million meaning the taxpayer will have to fork out another £3bn just to keep it afloat which seems an incredibly expensive way to keep jobs open in the provinces.

Oh and apparently "Northern Rock" is being used as a metaphor although in my story I really not sure who it represents.