Friday 20 May 2011

Is financial repression on the agenda?


Two posts suggest it should be. Aidan Regan proposes that we should go beyond the pension levy and how, through taxation and capital regulation, generate resources for investment and to pay existing debt.  In a separate post, Michael Taft suggests the Government borrow from pension funds at negotiated rates to fund an expansionary investment programme.  Both conclude there are better ways to put private savings to work for the economy than is currently being pursued.

2 comments:

Michael Burke said...

One of the neglected points on the NPRF was how poor the returns were. Accordng to NTMA, they averaged just 1.7% per annum over the life of the Fund.

Of course, if they are going to be used now to bail out British, German and French banks, the returns and the capital will rapidly tend towards zero.

But pensioners can get a better deal than this if the funds are invested in productive enterprise.

Adam Larragy said...

Rawi Abdelal does a great job of charting the changes in international and academic attitudes to capital controls in his book 'Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance'.