It's everyone, not just public sector getting screwed...

[Aaron]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/07/average-savings-down_n_1133308.html?ref=uk

The Bank Of England stole 25% of pensioner's savings with it's quantitative easing.

[Throttled]

I don't see what you base your claim on from that article. What I do see is an article about how many have not saved enough for their pensions, especially as they failed to consider an econmic downturn and instead they have sat on property price rises as a sort of pension fund, which is easier said than done as it mean you have to sell your house to get your money or do costly equity release.

I bet that equity release will be the next mis-selling scandle as the banks have yet to see anything appropriately that I can see.

[Aaron]

Well wikipedia puts the M4 supply at just under £1.5 trillion in 2007. Since then they've printed another quarter of a trillion in QE. Inflation is now at 5.4%, which is ridiculously artificially low.

I can't afford to pay into a pension, so I have no idea how people of a similar age in unskilled work would. And any pension people did have is now worth alot less than it should be.

[sparkeh9]

how sad is it that what people paid in is now worth less, even with inflation . It seems as though you'd be better off leaving it under the bed!

[TC]

Then if anyone makes a stand and says 'Enough is enough' they get slated by everyone else.

Blame the Government and bankers for bringing the country to its knees, not the unions

Yes they tried to screw us. We went on strike they backed down

[techno]

Then if anyone makes a stand and says 'Enough is enough' they get slated by everyone else.

Blame the Government and bankers for bringing the country to its knees, not the unions

Yes they tried to screw us. We went on strike they backed down

 

Would you like to pick a particular government to blame

[Throttled]

Pretty much the whole of the Government was to blame as very few listened to the warnings by Vince Cable of a pending crisis.

[Susieque]

Anyone who has tried to put something away for their old age, by whatever means, is being shafted from all directions!

My Dad's investments are giving little or no return now so as someone said, he might as well put it all under the mattress. The only thing that is returning any kind of 'interest' are his Premium Bonds'!!!

 

Then if anyone makes a stand and says 'Enough is enough' they get slated by everyone else.

Blame the Government and bankers for bringing the country to its knees, not the unions

 

It's not the Unions as such - they can't force people into striking. It's simply ordinary, very worried folk trying to make a stand and be heard to protect what they thought they had!!

[Aaron]

THe system is fundamentally broken (by design), and it needs to change. But in order to be able to make the change we need to hit the reset switch. Steve keen's debt jubilee ideas, i think, are now the only way forward.

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This telegraph article explains why that is a bad idea, but is flawed. It's based on the assumption that somehow we are going to repay our debt (which is impossible), and expect that the same thing won't happen again. If we don't operate a debt-based economy then we don't have to worry so much about how 'investable' we are.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/edmundconway/6986140/Why-a-debt-jubilee-is-not-the-answer-to-Britains-prayers.html

[Matt Strange]

Pretty much the whole of the Labour Government was to blame as very few listened to the warnings by Vince Cable of a pending crisis.

That's better

[Mawsley]

Pretty much the whole of the Labour Government was to blame as very few listened to the warnings by Vince Cable of a pending crisis.

That's better

Any particular reason why you reckon they are the only ones responsible?

Try casting further back and look what Thatcher did to private pension provision, employment contracts and personal investments.

[Bogof]

Try casting further back and look what Thatcher did to private pension provision, employment contracts and personal investments.

 

And she stole my milk. Bitch!

[Mawsley]

Depressing stuff when you realise that all politicians are clueless and work only for themselves and their future wealth.

I'm open to all workable solutions; ones involving full-scale revolution are particularly attractive.

[Matt Strange]

Any particular reason why you reckon they are the only ones responsible?

Try casting further back and look what Thatcher did to private pension provision, employment contracts and personal investments.

It wasn't any worse than Gordon brown's complete & utter f*ckup taxing private pensions!. Not to mention that you didn't have young people with huge student debts, no pension at all & not much of a chance of even buying a small place to live under Thatcher.

Blair & Brown have utterly destroyed this country for young people, Britain in 1997 was a bloody nice place to be really & it was a dam slight easier (certainly fairer) to get started in life. 13 short years and it all went down the plughole.

Put it this way, in 1997 food, booze, fags, petrol, were about half the price they are now, average wage was around £16-17K. A nice-ish family house in Oxford was only about £75K, no student fees.

2011 you're looking at near double for those consumables, average wage is only about £23K, that house is well over £200K & students have to fork out around £15-20K just for a degree...if they can get a job worthy of it.

[Guest akey]

By the way don't refer to all banks as bad, there are some truly sustainable and ethical banks out there, but guess what they might not be the cheapest or most profitable !!!

[Mawsley]

It wasn't any worse than Gordon brown's complete & utter f*ckup

I didn't say it was, I was just correcting your political myopia

[Aaron]

Speaking of Gordon, I saw this on Zero Hedge today (posted yesterday)...

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/gordon-browns-gold-trade

[Throttled]

It was apparently a good deal at the time, just what George Osbourne claims about selling the best bit of Northern Rock to Richard Branson for a knockdown price (the tax payer keeps the crap bit).

The fact they never get punnished just fuels the system which allows them to function with impunity and at no risk to themselves, despite what they say.

[Aaron]

It was apparently a good deal at the time, just what George Osbourne claims about selling the best bit of Northern Rock to Richard Branson for a knockdown price (the tax payer keeps the crap bit).

The fact they never get punnished just fuels the system which allows them to function with impunity and at no risk to themselves, despite what they say.

 

Yeah Funny how "a good deal" is so easily synonymous with "a bank bailout" ...

"In front of 3 witnesses, Bank of England Governor Eddie George spoke to Nicholas J. Morrell (CEO of Lonmin Plc) after the Washington Agreement gold price explosion in Sept/Oct 1999. Mr. George said "We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.

Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."

[Matt Strange]

It wasn't any worse than Gordon brown's complete & utter f*ckup

I didn't say it was, I was just correcting your political myopia

I'm not myopic or defending anyone really, MPs are pretty much all c*nts.

Interesting to note that the only two times that this country ran a trade surplus since WWII (i.e. no deficit & paying down UK debt) was under Conservative Governments, Thatcher/Lawson in the 80's & Major/Clarke in the mid 90's.