Monday 14 January 2008

United Kingdom Sovereign Wealth Investment

Other countries buy into mineral resources, major solvent financial institutions, port and transport infrastructures, cutting edge manufacturing.... sort of nationalisation of other states' assets.

We, or rather the Labour regime, puts up £55 billion for Northern Rock.

As the Telegraph remarks, we will be watching a United Kingdom government repossessing people's houses for failing to keep up with their mortgage payments under pressure from interest rate rises next - and a Labour government at that.

Now Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund, built on oil and gas resources exploitation, is a pension joy to behold.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

They may also end up prosecuting the mortgagors. As mortgage renewals come up, those who have been less than honest in their original mortgage application will have difficulty in finding a mortgage loan provider elsewhere. They'll be trapped by their own fraudulent application.

The questions is, will these people be prosecuted? If not, why not?

Imagine two couples, couple A and couple B. Both have had their houses repossessed. Couple A lied on thier mortgage loan application; couple B didn't lie but because of couple A's lies they most probably had to pay more for their house. But for couple A's lies, couple B may have been able to keep up with payments. Couple B will be understandably bitter about this situation but will salt be rubbed into their wounds by not bothering to prosecute couple A's dishonesty?

Sackerson said...

We're of one mind here, I see. And isn't Iceland doing rather well in its investments, too? Also, it's a proper democracy, I believe. I think I could get put up with cold, cod and vodka for that.

Anon: I understand that mortgage providers in the USA may have made themselves liable if it can be shown they colluded with the borrower in making false statements on loan applications; "jingle mail" with a vengeance. What about here in the UK?

hatfield girl said...

You were first, S.

We were talking about the Northern Rock loans being well of the order of major sovereign wealth investments and Mr HG thought the reason there aren't US/UK sovereign wealth funds is because essentially such funds belong in big, state economies and that's not what the US is, or the UK is supposed to be - effectively the state taking major ownership of sectors of the economy or important firms, only in the case of SWFs it's a foreign state. NR of course is just a pathetic, straight regime take over to rescue a collapsed sector of the country, never mind the economy, and horribly indicative of the economic incompetence of the Labour regime. (what is it about Labour that wrecks the economy every single time, even in the most extraordinarily favourable of circumstances?) They just can't leave markets and individuals alone. Bullies.

Presumably that's why (not being a big statist) in the Thatcher oil years there was no setting up of a Norway-like Fund. Pity, though, in view of what Brown did to the substitute pension arrangements people made privately.

lilith said...

In addition anon, lawyers have no business assisting mortgage fraud and it is obvious to any conveyancer when an application is fraudulent. They are meant to report their client.