Grumponomics

A typical fund manager

Investing is a tricky game. It's all in the timing, as I found out when I recommended to my investment club buddies that we buy Railtrack shares a week before Stephen Byers, bless 'im, 'nationalised' (i.e. nicked) the lot. It wasn't all bad, though, as it's given the lads an opportunity to relentlessly take the mickey ever since. Sigh.

If you don't take an interest in the stock market, or gilts, or bonds, take a bow, because the smug podgy half-wit who's taking 3%-5% out of your pension pot each year for 'managing' it is relying heavily on your disinterest to fund the balloon payment on his/her Aston Martin. I stopped paying into pensions some time ago. My retirement plan is now to ask my wife to hit my lower leg with a mallet just before we retire, so I can get some of this disability benefit everyone keeps talking about. A moment of pain, a lifetime of gain.

A quiz. If you had built up enough debt to entirely fill the Albert Hall with £20 notes¹, what level of interest would you choose to pay? a) 10%? b? 5%? c) Bugger all? This is the fascinating position in which our fabulously profligate government finds itself. By following public spending policies to help keep interest rates negligible, and printing money Zimbabwe-style to make the debt worth less and less, it hopes to emerge from the gargantuan hole it has dug for all of us. Move over savers; we have to pay for those civil service pensions somehow.

Doubtless there are a few suckers who killed themselves in their early careers saving and paying off their mortgage. Fools! You wouldn't find me doing that.² But never fear - it's not too late. The housing market, against every law of physics or rational explanation, is on the up and up once more. So go out and get yourself some debt, and bag an executive box in Uxbridge for half a milllion quid. Money is cheap! Let the good times roll! Pop the champagne! (Did someone say 'bubble'?)

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1- No really. And some. Leave an appropriate comment and I'll send you the maths if you're interested.
2- ...again