Savings Guarantee Rises to £50,000

How safe are savings in the Nationwide Building Society? Any comments?

Whatever you think, UK deposit are already "de facto" guaranteed because the government would never allow a bank to go bust.
If it was the case I reckon they'd prefer nationalising than face a riot.
Things are sorted on a case-by-case basis (as they did with Northern Rock, HBOS or B&B).

Why can't they just tell it?

Because it would mean the Government taking onto its books up to £1,900bn in banking assets – a sum far in excess of Britain's annual output of £1,300bn.
That would be very bad news for UK bonds, for the pound and for interest rates.

"Guarantee! guarantee!" is the same sort of collective hysteria we saw last year with Northern Rock (remember, it was "Withdraw! withdraw!).

Keep your cold blood and don't be fool on that one....

Brown and co keep saying our deposits are safe. If they are so confident it would cost them nothing to issue a guarantee because there would never be a call on it.
Such a guarantee would resolve most of the confidence problems which would make people shift their cash to the Irish banks or into gold (people doing this are going to lose out - the ramping of gold is being done by those who have already done it trying to pump up the price). With confidence restored the possibility of a call on the deposit guarantee reduces further still.
The fact that Brown does not issue the guarantee suggest to me that he is lying about the security of deposits. This is the real reason that NR has stopped taking deposits. NR is also reducing its savings interest rates in an attempt to push away existing depositors.
The Irish know the game is up and have issued a guarantee they can't fulfil in the hope the worst won't happen. The bonus is that they get some liquid cash from overseas savers to prop up their system.
Brown needs to keep as much UK owned cash in UK banks as he can an he needs to wake up PDQ. Matching the Irish guarantee could be a vital step.

I retired after working hard for lots of years and took part of my pension as a lump sum. I ignored the advice of the advisors who said invest in this that or the other and I put it all in savings accounts. This is the best thing I could have done because the few shares I have are now only worth half of their value one year ago. It may be at risk but I have now spread it amongst different banks so it should all be safe.
Do the contributors think that my pension lump sum should not be protected? I will never agree with that, it is my pension which is only deferred income.
I may be in the 2% with more than £50,000 in savings but I do not consider myself one of the rich.

If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214. So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.

Has anyone any news about the Iclandic Banks as I put some money into Icesave because of the 35,000 limit wanting to spread it around - I know they are part of the EU only promises to guarantee 16,500 and the UK the rest - how will the new UK £50,000 limit affect this?

I could afford to put more than £50K in a few savings banks but most of what I have saved for my retirement is in property, shares and gilts. Many other 'fools' are probably equally foolish and have adopted this 'diversified' - risk spreading - strategy. Probably the falls in the value of our property and many of our shares don't bother us yet because we don't need to sell; certainly my rental income and share dividends have not collapsed yet.
But of course it is true that if I had got the timing perfect I could have sold property and shares at the top of their markets and kept all the proceeds in cash. Hindsight is wonderful. Perhaps Fenemore diversified as I did but had the perfect hindsight and now has just cash?

Germany now has unlimited guarantee. If Gordon Brown is so confident in the banks - he implies that he has an inside track into what's going on - and will do anything to stop a bank failing due to liquidity problems, then there's nothing to lose in offering an unlimited guarantee. But what he has said is very telling. He will not let a sound, solvent bank fail for lack of liquidity. Banks which are not sound and solvent may be allowed to fail. That's why the deposit guarantee is not unlimited. I think he'll have to change his plans though.

I feel like the world is about to collapse, with 8 buy to let flats, my pension invested in stocks and shares and a fair amount of my cash in Icelandic Banks (albeit below the £35k compo limit). What do you do other than just sit tight and hope for the best.

Go to http://www.fscs.org.uk

The page you will want is http://www.fscs.org.uk/consumer/How_to_Claim/