Iain Dale’s Bog, in a post titled The Truth About Pensions commented on the theft by a Labour chancellor from the pension funds of ordinary punters like us and how it will harm the fabric of society in future. Visit Iain's blog but if you don't fancy reading the report of William Hague's speech just look at the third comment down the list. It is from "voyager" (no url provided) and tells, quite believably, that the situation with pensions is not just worse than right wingers like Iain Dale and William Hague thought, but worse than the worst worst - case scenario dreamed up by those dangerous lefties at The Guardian and The BBC.
Here's an extract:
By taking the dividend tax credit he reduced funds reinvested in the Stock Market thus lowering share prices.
The low share prices made British companies cheap for Spanish, German, French acquirors and Private Equity.
The Insurance Companies could raise cash by selling shares to Private Equity Funds they were funding themselves, and thus get two bites at the cherry.
The use of PFI has reduced Gilts yields which makes annuity rates very low for people forced to buy them by age 75.
Thus instead of issuing Gilts to prop up Pension Funds and Annuities Brown has sucked capital out of Pension Funds and forced them to look for Private Equity deals or PFI to compensate for low-rating on Equities and shortage of Gilts.
Using CMOs as a substitute for Gilts is dangerous as defaults increase from an over-priced property market as investors seek alternatives to Equities.
To add to this disaster, local authority pension funds are invested in equities so the shortfall has led to increases in Council Taxes
The other gem is that there are fewer and fewer companies in the FTSE, fewer blue-chips to invest in - compare the FT Index now compared to 1990 and the number of Industrials that have gone
After that it just got too horrific for a family website like this. Voyager obviously knows his stuff and I wonder is the anonymity masking a city trader.
Follow Little Nicky from now on because not only have we declared war on Labour, Cameron's recent antics have made it open season on the Tories too. Its going to be fun folks.