I was thinking the same. Defo one of those politicians who performs better without the spotlight/pressures of being the party leader. To provide some impartiality here, I think William Hague was the same.
Latest government advice on managing the cost of living crisis: Had a tip on a horse running at the 3.40 at Newmarket tomorrow- 33/1. Worth putting your life savings on it each way
He went proper Daily Mail as leader, but in most of his other posts I felt he thought things through and spoke really well.
Was it Dennis Healey who was ridiculed when the economy was similarly in peril because of massive debt and high inflation and he had to borrow from the IMF in return for reducing public spending? Kwarteng has got himself in a similar pickle already - but there is no public spending to reduce. They’ve done that to death.
Pension "unit" funds take as fees a % of the value of each customers funds. If the funds drop in value in a year, then the fund managers make a loss that year. So a loss taken out of N years of consecutive growth (N = 10 is a good heuristic : expect one financial crash per decade) . So what average % drop across UK fund management has currently occurred ?? Semi-rhetorical question for me (as I will have a sample measure first thing tomorrow morning for my own fund) . "It all strikes me as a little bit 2008, to be honest." Not really. The CDO scandal was characterised by the buyers not being able to vaguely quantify the % linkage of each CDO type to funds based on the USA "sub-prime" mortgage market, so they assumed the very worst (something I contend in reality was not the case, and I still get WUM return on it from financial "markets" f**kwits ) . Pension fund managers by contrast are subject to the systems engineering adage that the true test of a system is how it behaves in a bad operating environment (their skill is changing the composition of the fund portfolios to minimise the drop in value) .
He was given the leadership too early and didn't know what to do with it. Didn't have much of a chance against Blair anyway, regardless of what he did. I basically despise everything he stands for though, so I was never a fan.
This from that snakeoil salesman is beyond ridiculous. Highlights supremely what a delusional rat **** he was in selling the brexit lie. Mainly posting this bcos of the comments at the end which are worth a read https://conservativehome.com/2022/0...hing-because-of-a-trifling-batch-of-tax-cuts/
There is a generic problem though which is similar to 2008 in concept if not in detail. If you hedge your risk with instruments that soak up a lot of cash in certain market moves, you need to be sure that you have a proper understanding of what the most extreme market move is. Because of the way pension liabilities are calculated most Pension Funds have huge initial exposure to interest rates. Most of them hedge that away. The most popular hedge a few years back was to match your liabilities with bonds. But that was deemed too expensive so the banks came up with clever derivatives that paid out if interest rates went down. This released lots of pension fund cash that could be put into riskier and therefore higher performing investments. But it seems the margin calls on a massive interest rate rise are not able to be met. I expect that the Pension Funds have not done too badly out of the recent changes on a net asset basis. The problem is they have run out of cash.
I withdraw my "not really" comment. The reason being ... "But that was deemed too expensive so the banks came up with clever derivatives that paid out if interest rates went down." And there you have it yet again : "clever" and "derivatives" in the same sentence. The "masters of the universe" moron hubris needs to be completely purged from the financial sector. "But it seems the margin calls on a massive interest rate rise are not able to be met." If they have built a "decision support" graph (which will use "utility" theory) , what "ball park" values do you think they set for the 1. probability that the base rate rises to 2.5% within a year 2. utility value for #1 occurring
To be fair they would have based it on historical changes with quite a big margin but that wouldn't be enough to meet what has actually happened. They didn't model a Kwarteng/Truss government.
That would be the same Chris Philp who gets a sizeable piece in the current issue of Private Eye shining the light on his property business which is as transparent as lead, has its tax affairs registered in Serbia and Montenegro, and has a track record of being an executive with companies who liquidate just before the taxman comes knocking And, you know, lives just down the road from me...