One For The Pot Promise Of The Day Fourteen

Having just won the London Marathon, must go soon, Chelsea want me in the line up for the big game against Arsenal.  This is a more factual and likely statement than Cameron's inevitable promise of big efforts in the first 100 days, that is, if elected.

In the last 100 or so days, add a few, he came up with new ways of dealing with the pension pots of the pensioners to come.  As a firm believer in the idea of if something can go wrong it will, the article linked below was interesting.

What seems to be happening is that the monetary policies being used to deal with current money problems do not seem to be working at either macro or micro economic levels.

This informed article in Pensions and Investments, "Monetary Policy, Its All Relative" hat tip The Automatic Earth, suggests that the accepted ideas used recently could be having the reverse effects to those intended for a number of reasons.

It is not a long article, intricate, but an interesting read, here is a quote:

When baby boomers were in the sweet spot for housing needs, expenditures on children and cars, etc. 30 to 40 years ago, the effect the central banks were expecting from QE might have worked better, as they expected it would, but that need not be a reliable prediction under the changed current demographic and wealth distribution.

A recent study by the Center for American Progress shows that millions of Americans (as high as 50% of households) are in danger of retiring with insufficient money to maintain the standard of living to which they are accustomed, and the problem is getting progressively worse.

Your previous editorial argues that QE by the central bank may impose unintended costs on pensions, at both the institutional and retail level.

Unquote.

It might be worse again in the UK and Europe.