You might care for this, if you've not already seen it.
Keynes the Man
Well people with gold plated pensions don't have to save do they?
I tell you what get all the MP's and civil servants on the same pension products that the majority of us are on in the private sector and then we'd see if they'd continue to whack savers.
The problem is, you see, if you have savings, it might make you able to exist without State 'Benefits' i.e Tax credits or welfare payments, and that would never do would it?
Kaletsky's: "Government could tax all bank deposits and other risk-free savings."
Did he really say "risk free"? Where has his head been this last eighteen months, not watching developments in the economy .
Northern Rock, now a crock.
RBS
HBOS
B&B
Risk Free, is the man utterly mad?
This article is amazing. I have linked to it on my Blog. Keep up the great work - I'm an avid fan! Regards Tp
The ministers have it easy they have a pension backed by the tax payers.
Due to Gordon Brown the pension I expect to get is not looking to be as guaranteed as I used to expect. I'm having to help top it up to ensure that I end up with what I originally expect to get.
Does Anatole Kaletsy think that money on deposit is kept in a biscuit tin beneath the counter? Isn't it reinvested to create more economic activity? The man hasn't got a thing right in all the years I've read him; policy makers should read his column and do the exact opposite of what he recommends.
When I studied Economics, I learnt that it was investment and not current spending that made the economy productive. And that since GDP = current purchases + savings and also GDP = current sales + investment, ergo savings = investment. You can read about it in Keynes's excellent "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" which most people who claim to follow Keynes have neither read nor understood. In the same way as you save money not by joining a savings scheme but by spending less than you earn.
So spending you hard earned income won't do anything to get us out of the recession; the best you can hope for is some well-placed investment so that the economy can take off again when the recession is over.
Robert
It's such a bizarre idea, it may be a comradely joke - the sort of joke Gulag guards used to crack for their prisoners.
Kaletsky is so discredited now [I, with others have posted on him from time to time] that it's a wonder anyone would take him seriously.
I was going to make a similar point to Mr Natural: Kaletsky implies (idiotically) that'savings' are somehow 'dead money'. But hardly anyone (except Ken Dodd) really keeps cash under the bed (or in a biscuit tin); they put their surplus in a bank (or similar). From there it is lent out to other people. This is the market mechanism which has evolved over centuries for efficiently relocating money from those who temporarily don't need it to those who temporarily do. This is pretty much the entire basis of our society, our commercial life and our prosperity. I have seriously wondered recently if Kaletsky is going senile, his remarks have been so stupid.
Would somebody remind me what is the point of working in this country.
I'm no banker, but what will banks leverage if private savings are destroyed or removed?
The moment, the MOMENT even a hint of this comes out of the Treasury or some Liebour apparatchik, I and hopefully every other saver in Britain will withdraw every penny. I nice banking crisis will bring the f*ckers to heel.
P.S. And if savings have slumped under Labour (as in your chart), what this effectively means is that money has been exiting the country at a faster rate than usual. For if people are spending all they have (and more) then, although the money may circulate here beneficially for a time - buyer-seller-staff wages-buyer-seller-investment in plant-staff wages-buyer-seller etc - eventually they will buy something made abroad, and when they do, the flow will simply be buyer-seller-importer-exit (to China or elsewhere). This is why Brown's (and Kaletsky's) cunning plan to get everyone spending like billy-o is so stupid. The man in the street tends to think that these people can't be utterly stupid, and so must know something he doesn't; but in fact, I don't think they've got a clue: they're just thrashing about in ignorance, waiting for something to turn up. (and, another point, the much-vilified actions of the so-called 'greedy bankers' were probably all that was keeping this country solvent)
Being somewhat of a financial dimwit, how would I go about converting my savings into Yen? The cunt has already destroyed my pension, and he is not going to have my savings.
DOS: "But hardly anyone (except Ken Dodd) really keeps cash under the bed (or in a biscuit tin) ... "
If a scheme like this ever sees the light of day, don't count on that being true for much longer.
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