Has Osborne Played A Blinder ?

[spyguy]

It will be a propaganda based measure which will be if re-elected we promise to:

1) Abolish stampduty as it's a tax on hardworking people

2) Bring back mortgage interest relief to help hardworking people

3) both of the above.

We will have to wait until the 3 December for the news.. One more LR fall between now and then.

If we're going this way, lets abandon the public sector. Now that really is a tax on the hardworking families.

[Snugglybear]

One for an actuary.

Can you liquidate Defined Benefit Pensions?

If not then this will amount to nothing - other than a bit of competition for annuities and Defined Contribution pensions, which are very few and of limited value.

If you can, would many people with a DC pension be stupid enough to liquidate them for a payout?

You can transfer a pension fund from a Defined Benefit scheme into a personal or stakeholder pension. Then, of course, you'll be able to take out whatever you like after the rule change.

Some employers offer incentives for people to transfer out, in the expectation that this will cost less than paying the eventual benefits.

All the sensible advice is to think very carefully about the sums before transferring out. People don't always take advice, though.

[Liquid Goldfish]

Is it feasible that this can provide a boost before the election?

If the new rules start on 6 April and the election is on 8 May, does that leave enough time?

Perhaps people intending to do this will start making offers and agreeing mortgages well in advance of getting their hands on their pots?

Or maybe it will be mainly a sentiment thing like many think HTB was and this will be sufficient to trigger a boost in advance of the rules actually comign into force?

Edited October 28, 2014 by oldsport

[Wurzel Of Highbridge]

Is it feasible that this can provide a boost before the election?

If the new rules start on 6 April and the election is on 8 May, does that leave enough time?

If it was going to have any effect, then you would ahve seen it by now as it's a fearmongering propaganda market push.

Quick buy now as were going to introduce Help To Buy.

Quick buy now as were going to let the boomers have their pensions in cash.

The only problems is that 99% have bought, investors parked their ill gotten gains and now there is pratically nobody creditworthy left to lend to. It's the same problem in the US, hence them lowering the criteriera for Fanny and Freddie.

I have been reading and contributing to the main blog and forum here and other sites for nearly 10 years. I can tell you one thing, all the kiddies hiding around the corner with £100k+ burning a hole in their pocket waiting for prices to drop have bought in over the last few years.

Who's going to buy at these prices? The 2015 graduates with £50k of student debt?

[frederico]

This will be the usual unintended consequences malarkey.

For a start, the type of people that have a significant pension sum are probably cautious savers and therefore unlikely to spend.

Or given the greater likelihood of getting your cash back and paying in tax free, may be an increase in saving and reduction in tax take.

Only our pathetic politicians would expect people to blow the money on rubbish.

[sPinwheel]

[Neverwhere]

I see that, judging from those moustaches, some clever sod has outsourced all the inspectoring to the French

[billybong]

Help to Buy and the consequent rise in house prices was supposed to "make everyone happy" (his own words apparently) but with the strong emergence of votes for UKIP then it's evident that he is a miserable failure - along with his party.

Then his party complaining about a £1.7 billion extra contribution to the eu that has been (apparently) calculated in accordance with rules his government agreed to - how third-rate is that.

Edited October 28, 2014 by billybong

[mrtickle]

Then his party complaining about a £1.7 billion extra contribution to the eu that has been (apparently) calculated in accordance with rules his government agreed to - how third-rate is that.

On Today's Keiser Report, Max said that the interest payable on the UK's £1.6Trillion is £1 billion each DAY.

And all this fuss over a "surprise" one-off £1.7 billion!

[mrtickle]

Also bear in mind that everyone releasing their pension early will receive advice from and adviser who will be keen to turn their new found windfall into some type of investment product yielding a commission or fees. I'm confident that these chaps will pointing out the downsides of BTL.

Actually this isn't right - and was quickly corrected by Paul Lewis of Moneybox at the time.

The assumption was that people taking the money early would receive the normal proper regulated advice, is the same as you'd get from a qualifed IFA. Probably because the chancellor used the word "advice".

But no - they are only getting unregulated "guidance" which is massively watered down from the original annoucement!

[zugzwang]

Nationalised banks, quasi-nationalised utilities, massive public works projects, a deep suspicion of everything European, blind veneration of the NHS, borrowing and spending on an unprecedented scale.

We've seen it all before, if only I could remember where...

[Venger]

Just to expand on that Winston Churchill speech... my original source missed out a bit. Not that I'm sure about LTVs or his solution. Credit starving the market for HPC to rolling back 20 years of HPI in low-mid-high prime, seems fairer. Break up the landlord position, and the locked in HPI of those also thinking of tapping their pensions to acquire even more housing to play landlord, in the forever HPI hyperbubble. (A friend of a relative, both in their 70s, considered it a while ago...'not earning anything in the bank'... but thankfully she saw sense. 0% on savings is better than losing 50% on overvalued assets, and all the hassle, costs and anxiety with it.)

Roads are made, streets are made, railway services are improved, electric light turns night into day, electric trams glide swiftly to and fro, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains - and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people. Many of the most important are effected at the cost of the municipality and of the ratepayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare; he contributes nothing even to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.

[..]The citizens are losing their chance of developing the land, the city is losing its rates, the State is losing its taxes which would have accrued if the natural development had taken place, and that share has to be replaced at the expense of the other ratepayers and taxpayers; and the nation as a whole is losing in the competition of the world - the hard and growing competition of the world - both in time and money.

And all the while the land monopolist has only to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes manifold, without either effort or contribution on his part. And that is justice!

[..]At last the land becomes ripe for sale -that means that the price is too tempting to be resisted any longer. And then, and not till then, it is sold by the yard or by the inch at 10 times, or 20 times, or even 50 times its agricultural value, on which alone hitherto it has been rated for the public service.

The greater the population around the land, the greater the injury which they have sustained by its protracted denial, the more inconvenience which has been caused to everybody, the more serious the loss in economic strength and activity, the larger will be the profit of the landlord when the sale is finally accomplished.

[..]No matter where you look or what examples you select, you will see every form of enterprise, every step in material progress, is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream for himself, and everywhere today the man or the public body that wishes to put land to its highest use is forced to pay a preliminary fine in land values to the man who is putting it to an inferior one, and in some cases to no use at all. All comes back to land value, and its owner is able to levy toll upon all other forms of wealth and every form of industry.

A portion, in some cases the whole, of every benefit which is laboriously acquired by the community increases the land value and finds its way automatically into the landlord's pocket. If there is a rise in wages, rents are able to move forward, because the workers can afford to pay a little more. If the opening of a new railway or new tramway, or the institution of improved services of a lowering of fares, or of a new invention, or any other public convenience affords a benefit to workers in any particular district, it becomes easier for them to live, and therefore the ground landlord is able to charge them more for the privilege of living there.

-Winston Churchil (1909)

Mixed / in full: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/churchill-winston_mother-of-all-monopolies-1909.html

and http://www.progress.org/banneker/chur.html

and google books pdf link

[Drone 19830312]

Imagine how awful that would be. Once a year, a full inspection of your house to make sure that you aren't doing anything inappropriate, like putting up pictures, or redecorating, or keeping a pet.

What an awful world that would be. Fortunately, we have a Tory government protecting people from such abuse.

Real people of course, not tenants.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

Imagine how awful that would be. Once a year, a full inspection of your house to make sure that you aren't doing anything inappropriate, like putting up pictures, or redecorating, or keeping a pet.

What an awful world that would be. Fortunately, we have a Tory government protecting people from such abuse.

Real people of course, not tenants.

I think I love you

[Bloo Loo]

Imagine how awful that would be. Once a year, a full inspection of your house to make sure that you aren't doing anything inappropriate, like putting up pictures, or redecorating, or keeping a pet.

What an awful world that would be. Fortunately, we have a Tory government protecting people from such abuse.

Real people of course, not tenants.

and possibly those on lifelong IO mortgages...

[Bloo Loo]

On Today's Keiser Report, Max said that the interest payable on the UK's £1.6Trillion is £1 billion each DAY.

And all this fuss over a "surprise" one-off £1.7 billion!

the 1.6 trillion is made up of successive "surprise" one off payments.

[The Knimbies who say No]

On Today's Keiser Report, Max said that the interest payable on the UK's £1.6Trillion is £1 billion each DAY.

And all this fuss over a "surprise" one-off £1.7 billion!

That is well wide of the mark, if reported accurately. More like £1Bn per week, projected to hit £70-£80Bn per annum by 2018 iirc. Still big sums of course.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Joan of The Tower

[mrtickle]

That is well wide of the mark, if reported accurately. More like £1Bn per week, projected to hit £70-£80Bn per annum by 2018 iirc. Still big sums of course.

Ta for the correction. I was a bit skeptical.

[Roman Roady]

Blinder??? Naaa too late for him to have an effect at the election.

However the bigger news is that this is the beginning of the end (to use the Churchill theme).

I have been wondering how the TPTB would break the end of pensions to the great unwashed.

I should have known...throw them some scraps and thus get them to demand it themselves, ala Thatcher and the great sell offs of the 80's. "Ask Sid".

When we all look back in 10-20 years and muse on how our parents managed to retire so early and yet we cant, we will look back at this as the beginning of the end.

BIG NEWS folks, the Ponzi is set to collapse.

[ccc]

We are spending a billion more every 3 days than we can afford.

That's the very simple example I give when folk are talking about 'austerity' and similar nonsense.

[Wurzel Of Highbridge]

On Today's Keiser Report, Max said that the interest payable on the UK's £1.6Trillion is £1 billion each DAY.

And all this fuss over a "surprise" one-off £1.7 billion!

Cameron is only pissed about the £1.7bn because his mates aren't getting it. If it was a £1.7bn to xyz bank in London it wouldn't even be mentioned.