From: Chris Malcolm 
Newsgroups: uk.politics.misc uk.finance
Subject: Re: Gordon Brown shows his contempt for British workers again
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 15:56:23 +0000 (UTC)

In uk.finance Crowley  wrote:

> But opposition politicians were scathing about the day's events. Shadow
> Chancellor George Osborne said: 'To sabotage the Turner report in this
> way is disgraceful. Why has the Government promised a serious "grown
> up" debate on the future of pension provision, only for the Chancellor
> to throw his toys out of the pram in this way?

I's like to step back from the current debate about "how can we get
out of this mess?" and consider how we got into it.

It seems to me that there would be no problem now if the monies that
pensioners had paid into what they thought were pension schemes had
simply gone into an appropriately cared for pot. Today they would more
than finance the necessary pensions. The problem has arisen because
someone had the bright idea of borrowing from this pot, because the
money wouldn't be needed for a long time, and put the money back
later. Unfortunately that scheme came unstuck because it depended on
certain rather more optimistic assumptions about the future economy,
demographics, etc., than simply leaving the money in the pension pot.

In short they lifted some of the money, taking the risk that they'd
easily be able to pay it back. Ooops!

Am I right in thinking that this is what happened?

-- 
Chris Malcolm cam@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB,  Informatics,  JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]