Renounceable rights issue, page-110

Words of caution are always a valuable input into any discussion as it makes people look hard at the reasoning behind their investment decisions. Of course, there is a chance that any particular view will be correct at some time. Black Swan events do occur. For that, I am grateful that Salty is the devil's advocate.

In a logical ordered world, and I am not wearing rose coloured glasses to totally believe we live in one, the risk of banks collapsing due to a significant house price collapse, is very low (though still there). The reality is that every stock you invest in has a risk of loss. It is the investor's job to weigh up those risks and act accordingly. For the reasons expounded by many above, banks have a lot lower risk than, say, a manufacture (witness VW) or a Telco (witness One Tel) or a service company (witness ABC Learning). You could extrapolate that to any company (indeed, check out other threads - there is always a dissenter).

If you believe in world economic collapse, get out of share investing and load up on provisions to become a survivalist. But for god's sake don't keep harping on about it.