Save Our Savers

Challenging the party line

Simon Rose — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:02:28 +0000

Save Our Savers members who have recently written to Government departments or to Conservative MPs to complain about the current financial situation and its impact upon savers have received strikingly similar responses. Below we have reproduced one typical example of this standard text and added our own responses to each point. We hope this will [...]

“Let’s be clear. We have intentionally blown the biggest government bond bubble in history.”

Simon Rose — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:42:06 +0000

With only a fortnight until Mark Carney is due to start work at the Bank of England, it is easy to forget that there is more to the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street than just the Governor’s role. This week, the Treasury Select Committee were vetting the reappointments of members of the Financial Policy Committee, [...]

Are central bankers losing control?

Detlev Schlicter — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:23:36 +0000

For over two decades Japan has been the global trendsetter in macroeconomic deterioration and monetary policy. It was the first to have a major housing and banking bubble, to see that bubble burst, to respond with years of first 1% interest rates, then zero rates, followed by various rounds of quantitative easing. Now Japan is [...]

Are you being served?

Simon Rose — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:15:58 +0000

This week saw yet more evidence of the woeful behaviour of Britain’s banks. Launched in August 2012, the Funding for Lending Scheme has provided UK banks with £16.5bn of cheap funds, resulting in a massive drop in savings rates. Yet the banks’ total net lending in that time has actually fallen £1.79bn. The last quarter [...]

George Osborne; forever blowing bubbles…

Simon Rose — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:12:13 +0000

House prices are rising again. According to Rightmove, records are being set in London, the South East and East Anglia, while housebuilder Barratt reports the highest demand in five years. Confidence has been boosted by the Chancellor’s Help-to-Buy scheme, with £3.5bn committed to shared equity loans for house buyers of up to 20% of a property’s value, [...]

It’s no way to run a country

Neil Bloomer — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:24:12 +0000

About a year ago, the Public Administration Committee said that a lack of strategic thinking was leading to a “patch and mend” approach to policy-making, which reflected differing departmental strategies and timescales. In its very critical report, the Committee said, “the Government’s inability to express coherent and relevant strategic aims” was influencing mistakes in a [...]

The extraordinary political power of unelected central bankers

Simon Rose — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:58:44 +0000

Quantitative Easing is a massive global monetary experiment which has seen the world’s central bankers print trillions of dollars. Despite being the most energetic money printer of all, relative to its economy, the Bank of England’s last bout of QE barely made the news here. It has been left to the Canadians to produce one [...]

Should savers be scared of big, bad Canadian wolf Mark Carney?

Simon Rose — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:57:20 +0000

With only two months until Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney takes up his post as Governor of the Bank of England, savers must be curious whether he will prove to be an improvement on Mervyn King. Neil MacDonald, senior Washington correspondent of Canadian TV station CBC News, has just presented a programme about the [...]

Warning: low interest rates are seriously damaging your economy

Simon Rose — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:38:33 +0000

There was widespread coverage of the Co-operative Bank’s failure to take over 631 branches of Lloyds. Many reasons were suggested as to why the deal had fallen through. But nowhere did we see mentioned the explanation given by Peter Marks himself. When interviewed by the BBC, the Chief Executive of the Co-op put the blame [...]

Trust me, I’m a politician!

Simon Rose — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:47:39 +0000

The financial system depends entirely upon trust. Our faith in financial institutions and regulators has been shaken in the past few years. But trust in politicians has also fallen, understandably so when we look at the some of the promises they made to get our votes – and then promptly broke. We could find very [...]