Total Irony Fail

Classic piece of self regarding nonsense from Haldane at the Bank of England.  He is blaming 'groupthink' by the Great Unwashed driven by social media for future crises.

It does not occur to the tin eared numpty that he and his cronies are just as vulnerable to groupthink as are us poor plebs.  You only have to read the article and see his ongoing adhesion to punk Keynesian claptrap as believed by every other Central Banker to know that he is not capable of thinking outside his own box.

As for the notion that "...the Bank can learn from “folk wisdom” of ordinary people to help it understand the economy better.  is just a delusion.  In any event if us plebs know more about the economy than the Bank does as this remark implies, just why are they bothering?

Epic fail.

Proof that the Bank of England has absolutely no F*****g Clue...

Here

What an utter twat.

Update: 13:25

Proof that he's a twat. (Well, one proof factor in a whole range of factors).

Here

And this section is always worth a laugh for its endless contradictory news items.

Here

Andy Haldane Maybe the First Honest Bank of England Employee...

...for admitting that he has absolutely no clue as to what he is doing.

FWIW pensions are a dead simple concept. They are just deferred income.  What make them complicated is all the Kafkaesque rules written around them by the likes of Haldane and his cronies.

Dear God. What next! What next?

Update.

To save putting this in the comments thread.

The principle around the pensions tax relief is that you are deferring your pay.  You get tax relief on contributions and the fund grows free of CGT and CT/IT (Yes, MW I know I know  - but this is the principle).  But when you draw your benefits as an annuity you get taxed on the whole payment, not just the interest component as in a purchase life annuity.  This applies however you take the 'pension'.

The laws of compound interest and the expected return on a mixed fund of shares, bonds and property (the assets in a typical pension fund) mean that if you save between 12% and 15% per year of your gross income, you will, by about age 65 have accumulated a fund large enough to buy you a 'pension' which will be about 50% to 67% of your final wage.  This is just one of those 'laws' that works.

The problem is all the bloody rules around this simple concept.  They - the government and their bureaucrats - have, to put it in technical financial services language, so forgive me, fucked it all up. End of.

I have run a business in this area for nigh on 30 years now and I have seen these ratios work and I have witnessed the utter, utter failure of the likes of Haldane and his cronies to do anything sensible ever. Ever.

And just to make another key point we do our level best to keep charges low.  But when upwards of 70% of my revenue goes back out of the door in a combination of taxes and regulatory costs, we are not the cost problem.