OT. EUSSR "Investment fund."

[harryagain]

Where your pension plan might disappear to.

They get ever more desperate.

[Nightjar]

Thank you for the pointer. It looks an interesting investment.

[Jethro_uk]

Wasn't there talk a few years back that the EU wanted pension investments to be treated as a common resource (cf. fishing rights) ? At the time, the UK had one of the more well funded pension industries.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So, apparently, are you.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Yes. I don't think it happened. Pension funds in the UK are privately held, which is not the case in all EU countries. (There is no fund for UK state pension - it's paid directly by taxation on those still working, which is another timebomb still to come.)

UK pensions became significantly less well funded since then anyway, although there's been some recovery more recently.

In UK, we've done £375B of QE already, and most economists seem to think it has made a significant improvement to our outlook, verses much of the eurozone. The other thing that has probably made proportionally much more difference is PPI compensation, which is now running at £24B. Because it is transferred from banks directly to those who spend (i.e. they borrowed to spend in the past, and therefore tend to be spenders rather than savers), although significantly less than the QE sum, it's probably 100% effective at going straight back into the GDP, whereas QE is only around 12% effective at going back into the GDP (the rest getting stuck in banks to bolster their capital). PPI compensation is therefore likely to also be a significant factor in the UK recovery.

[Jethro_uk]

I have no idea if anything we bought/took out in the past 10 years is affected :(

[Huge]

Apply anyway. :o)

[bert]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

There is nominally a fund, the National Insurance Pension Fund. It is been funded by a hypothecated part of your NI deductions. It used to have a healthy and growing surplus. C£50bn at the time.

In 2004 Gordon Brown stole about 2.4bn per annum of its income by introducing an environmental levy through NI but then reducing the pension fund contribution by the equivalent amount. The alternative would have been to raise income tax.

Up until 2006 it was invested in guilts which earned it interest but then Gordon Brown stole it by transferring it to an account with the commissioner for national debt.

It's note easy to get figures on its current status as people pretend it doesn't exist although its accounts are I believe placed annually in the Commons Library.

As to the future time bomb well life expectancy actually went down this year. People are working longer and the working population is going up and up not least by immigration and we are told they are making a massive contribution to the economy.

[Adrian]

Gilty as charged!

[Huge]

No there isn't.

[Chris French]

Actually, there is (though it seems little known about).

You can see the accounts here:

There is a bit of background info in them as well.

[Huge]

No there isn't.

It's not a "fund" in any meaningful sense. ICBA to look, because I've already had this argument several times, but I imagine your URL states that the account is to smooth out variations in inflow and outflow. It is not an investment fund, a wealth fund or any other kind of "fund". It's a current account.

[bert]

Altogether now = Oh yes there is.

[bert]

*Your* definition of a fund is just that.