Maybe because the net national debt for the UK in July 2011 stood at £2300 billion (140% of GDP) if you include bank bail-outs or £940 billion (64% of GDP) excluding the bank bail-outs.
For really scary figures, look at total cash in circulation for any country against the value of their reserves, most major economies hold billions in gold but trillions in debt. A bit like having a £1million mortgage on a £1000 house.

Ian
The printing of pieces of paper to pay off the country's debt would simply lead to hyperinflation. It has been tried before many times and it always ends up with a financial disaster. Have a read of "This Time it is Different" by Rheinhart & Rogoff. It should be compulsory reading for anyone wishing to stand for Parliament. Mistakes would hopefully not then be repeated by governments.

The belief is that all the banks are so inter-connected that if they were allowed to stand on their own feet they wouldn't have been able to, there would be a run on the banks as people lost confidence and the domino effect would cause caos leading to the end of the world as we know it- i.e. probably the conditions that would have led to a breakdown in society as we know it and maybe even war.

Instead the debt has now passed to governments who are all inter-connected and once one country goes bust the same thing could happen unless the banks bail out governments?

We shall never know for sure what would have happened if the global banking industry had not been artificially propped up.

I am sure that people would not have suddenly all been out of work and unable to produce food and create wealth.

Surely there would have been the risk of civil unrest on a large scale, but the outcome is unknown.

Once a system is nolonger viable and capable of sustaining itself - whether a collection of cells that make up human being, a bank or a country it cannot be kept alive indefinitely to keep it ticking over in a state of suspended animation. Nature doesn't work like that and we are part of nature whether we like it or not.

It's like somebody on life support but in a vegetative state - you can keep feeding the person intravenously and administer oxygen but if that person is totally brain dead and in a coma it is very unlikely that he/she shall suddenly jump out of bed to once more lead a productive life.

I'm scared that we are being kept alive artificially and that only a good old-fashioned world war shall clear the air for those left to make a fresh start.

Rose G

At the same time as governments lent money to the banks via quantitative easing - for them to lend on to small business - governments ordered the banks to build up their capital reserves and not take any risks. But lending to small business is always risky. This is called doublethink or cognitive dissonance.

So the banks compromised and lent to big business which has cash coming out of its ears. Siemens has lent billions of Euro to the European Central Bank. Siemens and all the other big companies all over the world are not rushing to invest because with governments everywhere cutting spending there are no profitable investments to be made. Would you invest in the UK where government plans to sack hundreds of thousands of people? Mass unemployment is a poor background for growth unless you are a pawn broker.

The cash with big business will leak out into the economy somehow. I expect a mix of big pay rises for the fat cats and value destroying over priced mergers and acquisitions. Followed by golden goodbyes as a reward for failure.

Rose G

On the subject of the Cameron's wealth:

http://www.dailymail.co....ers-So-truth-money.html

As the Mail is a Tory paper, I suspect that it has massaged the numbers down.

The situation with the banks is a bit like postwar Germany under Allied occupation. The Allies could not administer Germany because they did not speak the language, did not have the manpower and soldiers don't know how to do all the jobs done by government officials. So they made a cursory effort to remove the worst of the known Nazi war criminals (usually to work for Uncle Sam as spies or rocket scientists) and left the rest in place with a cursory de-Nazification and re-education programme. Amazingly, Germany is now a decent country able to hold its head up among the civilised nations

With the banks, governments are in the same position. They do not have the skilled manpower to do all the legitimate things banks do. So they can prosecute some of the high profile known criminals and have a few others sacked. But they have to leave most employees, even those at the top, in place. Because they are irreplaceable.

The biggest limiting factor is that almost all the banks have international operations. Many have more employees overseas than in the UK. Foreign governments are unlikely to agree to a British government making unilateral changes that drastically affect their economies.