UK News

Time for salary cap for bankers?

It’s not a great time to be a banker at the moment with financial apocalypse making the pin-striped gents probably more loathed than estate agents or journalists. Thousands of them have lost their jobs and those that are still in paid employment are finding that their renumeration packages are coming under ever greater public scrutiny.

Over the weekend reports that the Royal Bank of Scotland was about to award its staff a billion pounds in bonuses prompted outrage at a time of soaring unemployment and with a deep recession looming. Most people would agree it is a no-brainer that a company that has just posted the biggest-ever financial loss in British corporate history, required a 20-billion-pound government bail-out to stay afloat last year and is now nearly 70-percent state-owned should not be allowing its staff to be trousering huge bonuses.

The banks say they are bound by contract to pay the bonuses and that they need to retain key staff.

But that argument has got the former deputy prime minister John Prescott so riled he has even launched a public campaign against the bonus payments on Facebook. “This is morally and economically outrageous,” wrote Prescott. “If we hadn’t bailed them out to save homeowners and businesses, their contracts would be worth nothing as they’d be out of work.”

Over in America U.S. President Barack Obama has set a $500,000 annual cap on executive pay and imposed other restrictions on companies that receive government aid. Chancellor Alistair Darling has said it is too early to follow Obama’s lead, despite the European Commission urging states to cap bank pay.

Is it time for banks that are receiving government help to be subjected to a salary cap or would that policy be counterproductive to economic revival?

Bumper profits for oil companies – worth picking a fight?

It is not surprising that many people find it thoroughly irritating to read headlines about oil companies, such as Shell and BP, making bumper profits thanks to high oil prices while consumers pay ever more to heat their homes.

With crude oil prices having fallen to around $70 dollars from more than $147 in July even Chancellor Darling felt compelled today to say the recent drop should be passed on swiftly to the consumer,

That’s a noble sentiment but are governments really able to tell corporate giants what to do? Whispers of windfall taxes have come and gone but the government didn’t even introduce one on the utilities.

Restricting companies in a way that could eat into their profits might not be a good idea anyway as some of them account for a large share of the dividends paid to UK pension funds by FTSE 100 companies – a whopping 10 percent in the case of BP, for example.

Moreover, some economists argue that measures such as windfall taxes are a short-termist solution to a permanent problem and thus don’t work.

What do you think? Is it time for the government to stop talking and show some muscle?

Spend and spend some more?

Recent headlines alarmed us with news of the country’s budget deficit having risen to its largest in six decades, while top economists ominously declared that we’ve moved beyond merely tipping into a recession, to hurtling towards one.

More crucially, both Chancellor Alistair Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown have sought inspiration from revered economist Maynard Keynes’ oft-cited advice – spend and spend some more to fight off the ill effects of an economic slump. Keynesian theory’s greatest principle is the fundamental concept of the circular flow of money. He opined that when individuals rein in money outflow, the government needs to be “priming the pump”.

Brown and Darling insist that we may very well fall prey to a vicious circle if we curb spending – most people hoard money in turbulent times, but times become even more difficult when we’re tight with money. Whether this theory will work remains to be seen.

In November’s pre-budget report, Darling is expected to announce an easing of fiscal rules and outline plans for priority and targeted spending on infrastructural projects. “What I want to avoid is getting ourselves in a position governments have done in the past, where you face an immediate problem and cut back on the things the country will need in the future … ,” says the Chancellor.

Close on the heels of his declaration comes U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s statement to Congress supporting the idea of a second wave of spending. Gearing up for Round Two in the feverish economy rescue battle no doubt.

Could fast-tracking future governmental spending plans provide a fillip to productivity and create job opportunities at a time when forecasts peg the unemployment figure to hit 2 million by end-2008? While staving off unemployment won’t hold good as a sole justification in light of a worrying debt-to-national income-ratio, expanding money supply can put a little power back in the hands of people. Might it restore some strength to the fragile confidence of today’s fraught consumer? What do you think?

Has the media made the crisis worse?

Since banks and world financial markets started collapsing over a month ago, politicians, commentators and people in the street have pointed the finger of blame in a variety of directions: at bankers, regulators, hedge fund managers, mortgage lenders, short-sellers and speculators, among others.

Now, it appears, the BBC is also in the firing line.

The broadcaster’s economics correspondent, Robert Peston, has broken several major elements of the unfolding story, from which banks were on the brink of collapse to the details of how the government was going to set about bailing them out. BBC radio interviewer John Humphrys has also been at the forefront of the story, grilling government leaders, especially Chancellor Alistair Darling, about the crisis and how the country, and the rest of the world, ended up in it.

But viewers and listeners to the BBC are now complaining that the broadcaster itself is responsible for fuelling the financial meltdown, with negative stories driving share prices down, and gloomy reporting making the atmosphere ever darker and more ominous.

“If the BBC sent John Humphrys and Robert Peston on holiday for a month, the financial crisis would be over tomorrow,” one listener wrote in to complain to a BBC radio programme on Friday. 

The email was the latest in a wave of complaints the BBC has received about their reporting on the story. Until now, the broadcaster’s management has been reluctant to get involved in the debate, but on Friday a senior editor stood by the journalists’ reporting and the tone which the broadcaster has adopted. 

“Our journalism is not second-guessing what effect it is having on this or that share price,” he said.

Wednesday’s front pages

The crucial poll win in Pennsylvania by US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton came too late for many newspapers, who predominantly went instead with rising food prices and fears for a missing boy in Wednesday’s headlines.

THE INDEPENDENT: The Chilling Message From Zimbabwe’s Church Leaders

The paper runs a dramatic quote in red and black letters which says: “If nothing is done to help the people of Zimbabwe, we shall soon be witnessing genocide similar to that in Kenya and Rwanda.” Story here.

DAILY MIRROR: The Lost Boy

Fears were mounting for a vanished disabled boy whose devoted mother was found dead in woods near her home in Worcester. Story here.

DAILY MAIL: The Petrol “Profiteers”

Consumer groups accused petrol firms of profiteering after raising prices by up to 5p a litre in 48 hours, ahead of a planned strike at Grangemouth refinery, the paper said. Story here.

Consumers go it alone as storm clouds gather

The dust has settled on Alistair Darling’s first Budget and consumers have been given little reason for celebration. The Chancellor, though announcing various measures designed to increase housing affordability, has done nothing to help the masses.

There were no moves to give a helping hand to hard-pressed householders, already struggling amid rocketing mortgage, food, fuel and tax costs, to ride out an impending recession. Darling did pledge to introduce a savings scheme targeted at low and moderate earners, often least able to save: the “saving gateway” will attract government matching for savings over the duration of people’s participation in the scheme. This has the potential to introduce up to eight million people into mainstream savings in the UK who otherwise might not make thrift a priority.

But the level of take-up of such a scheme, amid record personal debt levels and huge pressure on people’s purse-strings, is debatable. Other such government schemes to encourage the nation to save have hardly been a runaway success: think stakeholder pensions and child-trust funds (CTF). One fifth of parents currently let their CTF expire — the government can’t even give money away.

Individual savings accounts (ISAs), on the other hand, have flourished. They are one of the government’s true success stories. More than one in three adults hold an ISA and almost 215 billion pounds has been invested — making them far more popular than other savings initiatives.

Yet, the limits that savers can squirrel away into these tax-efficient vehicles have sorely failed to keep pace with inflation. The allowance will increase to 7,200 pounds from 7,000 pounds (3,600 pounds of which can be held in cash, up from 3,000 pounds) in the coming tax year — but that means the total threshold has risen by less than 3 percent since the accounts were introduced almost a decade ago. “Failing to increase ISA allowances further is a poke in the eye of savers who need encouragement to put away money,” says David Kuo, head of personal finance at Fool.co.uk.

Other changes to the ISA regime mean people will be able to switch cash holdings into stocks and shares — but the reverse will not be possible. And, once the switch has been made, there’s no turning back. The new rules raise the spectre of “another ghastly financial scandal”, according to Cliff Husband, research director at AWD Chase de Vere. “People could switch their ISA cash savings into investments unaware that they can’t switch back. This looks like another poorly delivered initiative from the government; it would be far fairer to all taxpayers if the switch between cash and investment within an ISA could be easily reversed.”

On pensions, too, there is little to encourage saving. While scrapping the 10 pence income tax rate and reducing the basic rate by 2 pence has done next to nothing to increase people’s take home pay, it has reduced the amount of tax relief they’ll get on their pension savings. The Chancellor has maintain higher level tax relief on gifts to charities, so why not for pensions?

Another “slap in face with wet kipper” Budget

By Francesca Lagerberg, head of the national tax office, Grant Thornton

Most Budgets have all the attraction of being slapped in the face with a wet kipper and sadly this one is unlikely to reverse the trend. As expected, from today up goes the cost of booze (4p on a pint) and fags (11p on a packet). Also for those who like driving larger less-green new cars there is a “showroom” tax coming in from 2009 that could cost them around 950 pounds.

However, for the entrepreneur there was a little cheer. After strong representations from business, Chancellor Alistair Darling has deferred the “income shifting” rules that were due to start from this April. These were a direct attack on family-owned businesses that include lower tax paying family members who take out dividends or profits but make a less significant contribution to the business. A case last year (Jones v Garnett) went against the government and it was looking to legislate to get the result it wanted. The proposals were wide-ranging and ill-targeted. A deferral will hopefully allow time to revisit this whole approach.

The working family got several name-checks in the Budget speech and this broadly amounts to an increase in child benefit (20 pounds per week for the first child) and the child element of child tax credit, but this will not take effect until April 2009.

There was no further change to the capital gains tax (CGT) regime so that from April 6 all individuals will be paying at a flat rate of 18 percent with the only hope of reducing the charge being a special entrepreneurs’ relief that has stringent qualifying conditions, but may help the smaller business to take their charge down to an effective rate of 10 percent. However, some others clearly benefit under the new regime. For example, those looking to sell a buy-to-let property after April will find that the new rules help them as the best tax rate they would get under the existing legislation would be 24 percent.

For non-domiciled individuals, the Chancellor provided further details on the radical changes taking effect from April 6. If they want to continue to get the tax advantages of being non-domiciled in the UK after then they will have to pay 30,000 pounds for the privilege once they are resident here for seven out of the past 10 years. However, for those who would not remotely be able to pay such a high levy remitting just small amounts of foreign income (2,000 pounds) will not be caught. This is a slight increase on the original 1,000 pound proposal. There is also a new test of where you were at midnight to work out what days you were really present in the UK, which may be more useful to internationally mobile workers than the rules we heard of last October at the pre-Budget report.

So, overall Darling’s first Budget was short on drama, but long on minor detail. A massive 207 pages of back-up notes support the Budget Red Book. For most people this event will provide little to cheer, but equally little to passionately dislike.