El Barbudo wrote:I think Osborne is seeing this as a way of boosting GDP. There will be plenty of people out there who need a new washing machine or suchlike and will see this as the ideal opportunity to cash-in their shares immediately. Gideon becomes a hero, the State loses its share in RBS and Stephen Hester is freed to ride off on his amply padded @rse to collect juicy bonuses for not running a bank very well and can spend more time with his 350 acres of Oxfordshire, his ski chalet in Switzerland and riding to hounds with the Warwickshire hunt, without Treasury officials asking him dumb questions. After all, he deserves it. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/busin ... nk-1716860 Quite.

El Barbudo wrote:I think Osborne is seeing this as a way of boosting GDP. There will be plenty of people out there who need a new washing machine or suchlike and will see this as the ideal opportunity to cash-in their shares immediately. Gideon becomes a hero, the State loses its share in RBS and Stephen Hester is freed to ride off on his amply padded @rse to collect juicy bonuses for not running a bank very well and can spend more time with his 350 acres of Oxfordshire, his ski chalet in Switzerland and riding to hounds with the Warwickshire hunt, without Treasury officials asking him dumb questions. After all, he deserves it. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/busin ... nk-1716860 Quite.

Given the govt had no option but to bail out RBS by basically buying the bank shouldn't the object of the exercise to be to sell it for at least as much as you paid for it so the tax payer gets their money back?

Giving it away in chunks of £400 might produce a spike in the retail sector but it will be a short term blip. That isn't even certain as people may just sit on the shares hoping they will offer a better return than savings accounts.

If he sells it and breaks even or makes a profit the govt has got its money back and he could use the cash to stave off further cuts, or to boost the economy by funding infrastructure projects or whatever. A house building program might be a good use of the money to help drive down the price of renting by increasing the housing supply.

All well and good, but the price per share isn't near what was paid. How long do you wait?

You get it into a position where it isn't costing us money and then wait for the share price to improve, giving the tax payer the windfall, not investors speculating.