This week the banks have taken another beating.  A Which?Money investigation found widespread ignorance of the ISA rules amongst the banks. It would appear that they don’t know their onions when it comes to Cash ISAs. Read more… 

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s the loss of the State owned RBS to contemplate. Although billions in the red bonuses were still paid out.  All this to ensure they could retain their “high quality”personnel and continue to attract the “very best” employees. Perhaps an appraisal of the abilities of current staff is in order before bonuses are paid to retain them.

The minutes of latest meeting of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) were also published this week. They show a four way split emerging amongst its nine members. A third of the MPC members are now in favour of a rate rise.  Surely it’s now a question of when, not if, a rise will come in 2011.

Meanwhile the FTSE All Share index, representing the performance of all 625 eligible companies listed on the London Stock Exchange has had a mixed week.  It has finished the week at 3,109.27 – a rise of 42.95 points during Friday’s trading but finds itself some 44.83 points lower than its opening level of 3,154.10 on Monday

So far this year the FTSE All Share index, which accounts for approximately 98% of the UK’s market capitalisation, has gone up 46.42 points from its’ opening price of 3062.85 at the start of trading on 4^th January 2011.