Ron Sandler has been appointed executive chairman of the newly nationalised bank, Northern Rock, which he said would continue to have a "key role to play in the North East"
Mr Sandler is 'well known to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and worked for the Treasury in developing the so-called stakeholder pension and investment products that were intended to help those on lower incomes save for retirement.' You couldn't make it up, to coin a phrase.
And the key role to play in the North East is either putting people out of their cars and houses and jobs, or removing the North East from the capitalist universe.
Mr Sandler has unlimited access to the taxes paid by the rest of us; the unlimited capacity of the North East's sense of justification and right to those taxes is unparalleled even in the Third Sector economics practised in New and Old Labour's heartlands and amply attested in comments offered to the press and blogs since there was a run on their overblown bank.
Smaller shareholders will doubtless be protected from their own investment foolishness; larger shareholders will probably sue the government.
Tax payers' money will continue to be sprayed across sociocultural 'initiatives' (handouts) by unaccountable foundations, and nominated bodies.
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7 comments:
The stakeholder pension is a good idea. Sadly, the problems of final salary schemes and the vagaries of the stockmarket have put people off, even though you can invest in cash through a stakeholder pension. But until means testing is abolished - with the assurance that it won't come back - it may well be a bad idea for the poorer sort to save at all.
What price merging Northern Rock with the Post Office - more branches at last! "National Rock"?
'Tax payers' money will continue to be sprayed across sociocultural 'initiatives' (handouts) by unaccountable foundations, and nominated bodies'.
Chilling Hats - as usual, you're pointing out a serious problem with Brown's disgraceful membership.
The Cambridge Journal of Economics is not what is picked up in the newsagent for the train ride to London, Scroblene. But Volume 31 No 6, which the postman kindly brought round to the house, is devoted to (or perhaps destructive of):
The Economics of New Labour: Policy and Performance.
It covers 1997 to last November. It does structural change, monetary policy, fiscal policy, energy and competitive markets, unemployment, (geography of as well), poverty, incapacity, the third way and the third sector...
When Cambridge goes for it, they are really scary. Not rightwing or leftwing, just matter of fact and backed-up with every number, model, theory, critique etc, in the world.
Mr HG didn't get any meals for a week.
The whole world knows about the government we've got. So shaming.
Yes, sacks, a system in which one's pension is determined by past contributions and the profitability of their investment is an excellent idea - though it has nothing to do with stakeholding.
But the move to such a so-called stakeholder pension from a Pay As You Go system in which current pensions are paid out of current contributions is not such a good idea. True, PAYG is a kind of pyramid banking, which unlike fraudolent pyramid banking scheme is feasible and sustainable as long as current pensions do not exceed current contributions. But the move from PAYG (or defined benefits, redistribution system) to stakeholders' pensions (funded, or defined contributions system) makes a hidden pension debt (= the present value of future pensions uncovered by past contributions) surface into public accounts without any need for it to surface, for it could have been buried in the folds of public accounting till Kingdom Come.
You certainly know more than I do about pensions, Sackerson, that most arcane of financial activities. If you say something is good it's sleeping head time.
But means testing, as any fule noes, is lies on legs. What do I have to do or be to get that? Here I am, meeting every requirement.
Behavior modification writ universal.
What the nuns would have called 'an occasion of sin.'
Gulp, C.
Come in LSE, you are the people who know this stuff.
C: agreed. It's just that stakeholders are better than the old personal pensions, which if contributions were discontinued could have the fund eaten up by charges.
Alas for the withering of the final salary schemes. Future generations will be poorer in retirement.
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