An Actual Title: “Punish Savers”

I read this Times Online article a couple of times, hoping to find that they were being silly.  I thought I came close, but kept stopping when I read this:

Assuming interest rates are reduced to about 1 per cent today, it will make little difference to savers if they fall all the way to zero. To all intents and purposes, income from bank accounts will be reduced to nil.

The next logical step, although it may be politically controversial, would be to do the opposite of what the Tories suggest. Instead of reducing taxes on interest payments, the Government could tax all bank deposits and other risk-free savings . This would create a negative risk-free interest rate, encouraging savers either to invest in property, shares and other productive assets – or simply to save less and consume more. In either case, the result would be more consumption and physical investment, less unemployment and faster recovery from the slump .

In the absence of a savings tax – and even Mr Obama would probably balk at anything so controversial – there are plenty of other measures to boost consumption and investment. Most obvious are direct government spending on infrastructure; public guarantees and subsidies for business loans or home mortgages; or tax cuts and handouts, especially for those on low incomes who tend to spend all their money. The beauty of such policies in a world of zero or near-zero interest rates is that they are effectively cost free. In the present environment, extra public borrowing does not displace private employment or “crowd out” business investment.

There are plenty of objections to ever-increasing public borrowing, not just fairness and efficiency but also the moral hazard of creating a culture of state-dependence. But in a slump, when the alternative is business bankruptcies and longer dole queues, these objections make little sense.

If you’re from the Time Online or you’re Anatole Kaletsky (the author), can you please tell me if you’re serious?

If not, allow this rant:  Why is it that you people JUST DON’T GET IT?  This is not all about consuming our way over the hill, like we’re a bunch of ants trapped by a mudslide of honey.

This – this financial ‘situation’ that the world’s ‘brightest’ and ‘best’ have unleashed upon us – is all about defiance.  Defiance when told I have to spend my hard-earned savings on crap that is made in some Gulag somewhere all to the benefit of some crap company that’s based in Georgia or Arkansas.  Defiance against being told that the solution is to relinquish the only method of control:  financial power and influence.  Defiance against caving in to CEOs that make as much in a few minutes as most people do in a year, especially when being told that you have to make concessions in order to continue to be employed to keep making more piece of crap cars that no one wants.

Ugh.  "Saving" is the cornerstone of an efficient capital generating system.  Without savings, you have no mass capital.  Without mass capital, you have no investments.  Without investments, you have no jobs.  Without jobs, you have no income.  Without income, you have no way to generate savings.

Do you get that it’s a cycle, or should I repeat myself?

Numbnuts.