Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Gilts, Gold and Property Tax
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Welcome to the Marrin
- 0:19Speaker 1: Talks Money Market Wrap, where we talk about the biggest
- 0:21Speaker 1: moves in the markets this week and what is driving them,
- 0:24Speaker 1: or more what we think might be driving them. I'm
- 0:26Speaker 1: Maren Sumset, Web Editor at Large for Bloomberg UK Wealth.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Now.
- 0:30Speaker 1: My usual co host John Steppeck is on holidays of
- 0:33Speaker 1: frolicking on a beach somewhere, possibly Greece, I think.
- 0:36Speaker 2: Anyway, fear not.
- 0:37Speaker 1: Our trusted fill in, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Marcus Ashworth is
- 0:41Speaker 1: with us today. Marcus, thank you so much for joining us.
- 0:43Speaker 2: My pleasure is Ella.
- 0:45Speaker 1: I think you filled in for me a few times
- 0:46Speaker 1: on my lengthy holiday in August. Not frolicking on a
- 0:49Speaker 1: beach and definitely not in grease, but nonetheless away.
- 0:52Speaker 2: We talked about you a lot, did you. No.
- 0:55Speaker 1: No, I was about to say welcome back and listen
- 0:57Speaker 1: to those, but I guess maybe I won't after all. Anyway,
- 1:00Speaker 1: quite an interesting summer and so much to talk about
- 1:03Speaker 1: now this summer is over. I think we're going to
- 1:06Speaker 1: have to start with the bond market, because it's not
- 1:09Speaker 1: often it makes it onto the front page of most
- 1:11Speaker 1: of the papers, but this week it has actually done that,
- 1:14Speaker 1: although things seem to have calmed a little bit now,
- 1:17Speaker 1: So Marc, it's just in a couple of short sentences
- 1:20Speaker 1: what's going on.
- 1:21Speaker 2: It definitely is gil market has dominated, as you say,
- 1:25Speaker 2: and it hasn't been quite exciting suburb compared to most
- 1:28Speaker 2: So it's not actually a UK specific reason this time.
- 1:33Speaker 2: That the sell off all year is being driven by
- 1:36Speaker 2: domestic factors politics, inflation and a number of other different
- 1:42Speaker 2: worries about upcoming budget which he now knows November twenty sixth.
- 1:47Speaker 2: But really what's been happening in the last week or
- 1:49Speaker 2: two is just a continuation of a much broader global
- 1:54Speaker 2: very long end bond selloff driven by a number of factors. Firstly,
- 1:58Speaker 2: as we know in the year was probably the UK
- 2:00Speaker 2: lad because we have a much increasing changing in our
- 2:05Speaker 2: pension system, which means that pension funds defined benefit schemes
- 2:10Speaker 2: do not wish to have as much exposure duration long
- 2:13Speaker 2: end bond exposure, something similar to happening in Holland. At
- 2:19Speaker 2: the same time, we've got a big sell off in
- 2:21Speaker 2: the second largest bond marketing world in Japan, and just
- 2:25Speaker 2: the last week or so we've also got a political troubles,
- 2:29Speaker 2: not just in the UK for once, but in France
- 2:31Speaker 2: with a potential vote on September the eighth, which may
- 2:36Speaker 2: see and yet another French government. So all these things
- 2:40Speaker 2: are conspiring with a bit of a sell off in
- 2:43Speaker 2: US treasury bond years, which the guilt market takes very
- 2:46Speaker 2: close measure to. But this week we've had some good
- 2:50Speaker 2: news in some senses from the Debt Management Office quarterly
- 2:54Speaker 2: guilt auctions, schedules and remits and syndications, and we have
- 3:00Speaker 2: very successful ten year auction one hundred and forty billion
- 3:03Speaker 2: pounds worth of overblown supply. But nonetheless they sold fourteen
- 3:07Speaker 2: billion before. If we've got a girl, all great news,
- 3:10Speaker 2: so we shows the demands there. This is not a
- 3:13Speaker 2: UK problem in the sense of liquidity. It may well
- 3:17Speaker 2: be one instolvency will come onto the budget a second,
- 3:19Speaker 2: but they are going to be selling a lot less,
- 3:22Speaker 2: a lot less, fewer more, indeed long end guilt and
- 3:25Speaker 2: particularly index linked inflation bonds, so you know they are
- 3:29Speaker 2: the government is at least trying to get out their
- 3:31Speaker 2: own weight. But nonetheless we still had very high yields.
- 3:34Speaker 2: It's very worrying and everyone's got a little bit over excited.
- 3:38Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go back a little too, whether there's UK
- 3:41Speaker 1: exceptionalism in here or not. So obviously, you know, our
- 3:45Speaker 1: yells have moved up substantially, But the other thing to
- 3:49Speaker 1: look at is whether they've moved up relative to other
- 3:52Speaker 1: countries yields, and that seems to suggest there is more
- 3:56Speaker 1: wrong in the UK than elsewhere. Right, So, since over
- 3:59Speaker 1: the last couple of years we've seen the ten year guilt,
- 4:02Speaker 1: he'll move from sort of knocking around the middle of
- 4:04Speaker 1: everyone else in the G seven to being actually one
- 4:06Speaker 1: of the highest prosibly the highest in the G seven,
- 4:09Speaker 1: which suggests that people are looking at UK guilt and
- 4:13Speaker 1: going nah, not so much.
- 4:15Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that we have two problems here.
- 4:17Speaker 2: We have higher inflation than cerly in Europe does, and
- 4:20Speaker 2: aly double because this government continues to do self harming
- 4:25Speaker 2: things like raising the minimum wage, raising civil servants pay,
- 4:30Speaker 2: taxing obviously, employer national insurance, and a rath of other stuff,
- 4:34Speaker 2: which has made the Bank of England's already difficult job
- 4:37Speaker 2: even harder. The Bank of England, of course, is also
- 4:41Speaker 2: making everyone's life harder by selling lots of its own
- 4:45Speaker 2: bond holdings constitative tightening in the active sense, no one
- 4:48Speaker 2: else does. But then we have a fundamental solvency issue
- 4:52Speaker 2: here whereby no one believes this government's economic policy is
- 4:57Speaker 2: going to work. They've not been able to get any
- 4:59Speaker 2: form of welfare cuts or cuts of any form of
- 5:03Speaker 2: government spending, and fundamentally everyone's worried about more tax hikes.
- 5:07Speaker 2: More bond issuance has been the only way out of
- 5:10Speaker 2: this whole. So unless this government can somehow get its
- 5:13Speaker 2: way round to actually doing something about controlling the runaway
- 5:17Speaker 2: government spending bill, then I suspect that is why, as
- 5:21Speaker 2: you said, the UK accepts and with a much more
- 5:24Speaker 2: sticky inflation backdrop, is why our yields a higher than
- 5:27Speaker 2: everyone else's.
- 5:27Speaker 1: Yeah, and now we've got this long wait for the
- 5:30Speaker 1: autumn budget end of November, now where we look at
- 5:33Speaker 1: this and we think, well, what will she do? And
- 5:36Speaker 1: that everyone assumes that this government is incapable, as you say,
- 5:39Speaker 1: of cutting spending and incapable of understanding the trade off
- 5:42Speaker 1: between government presence across the economy and growth, and only
- 5:47Speaker 1: capable of bringing in more and more and more taxes.
- 5:51Speaker 1: So it seems looking around that it's unlikely that we'd
- 5:54Speaker 1: find some kind of happy medium of lower inflation and
- 5:57Speaker 1: higher growth. Yeah, so we should be nervous, should be
- 6:00Speaker 1: really nervous.
- 6:01Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I think the crux for all this is
- 6:03Speaker 2: the Office for Budget Responsibilities assessment and it's down to
- 6:07Speaker 2: this neebolous concept of productivity and whether they think productivity
- 6:12Speaker 2: growth is falling or rising indeed in the UK, and
- 6:15Speaker 2: this is going to make a very big difference. Every
- 6:18Speaker 2: zero point one percentage point of its change, probably worse
- 6:23Speaker 2: in where it expects productivity to be, will cost about
- 6:26Speaker 2: nine to ten billion extra for the government for Rachel
- 6:29Speaker 2: Rus to find, so most estimates, I think he's going
- 6:32Speaker 2: to have to find an extra twenty billion on top
- 6:35Speaker 2: of a ten billion head rugs of thirty billion in
- 6:37Speaker 2: total to get a back itself back where she was
- 6:40Speaker 2: in the spring statement. There are lots of different other estimates,
- 6:43Speaker 2: but that seems to be consensus. But this will could
- 6:46Speaker 2: dramatically change if they alter the productivity growth assessment. This
- 6:51Speaker 2: is really in the weed stuff. We shouldn't be beholden
- 6:54Speaker 2: to some form of spreadsheet analysis and having a change
- 6:57Speaker 2: in targub on policy to keep up to this the
- 7:00Speaker 2: whole time. It is madness, but it's exactly what we've
- 7:02Speaker 2: got for another three months worth or whatever. It is.
- 7:05Speaker 2: Then a renmber to find out more scarce stories about
- 7:08Speaker 2: which tax tax is going to have to raise to
- 7:10Speaker 2: somehow make these magic numbers that up.
- 7:13Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose one thing we could say, I'm im
- 7:14Speaker 1: presumably the rest of the world, should they ever bother
- 7:16Speaker 1: to look at us, look at us and think wow,
- 7:18Speaker 1: all their senior politicians keep crying on the telly and
- 7:22Speaker 1: looking at for example, example, Angela.
- 7:24Speaker 2: Raina's current problems.
- 7:26Speaker 1: Will only look at these through.
- 7:26Speaker 2: The lens of tax.
- 7:27Speaker 1: Okay, you know, obviously one of the things it says is, oh, look,
- 7:30Speaker 1: stamp duty is incredibly complicated and difficult to deal with,
- 7:33Speaker 1: such that even your own housing secretary can't understand the
- 7:35Speaker 1: way your stamp duty works.
- 7:37Speaker 2: But given this political hiccup.
- 7:40Speaker 1: That the government are having at the moment, do you
- 7:43Speaker 1: think less likely that they're going to go for more
- 7:46Speaker 1: and increasingly complicated property taxes in the budget. Could you
- 7:50Speaker 1: maybe step back and say, do you know what, maybe
- 7:52Speaker 1: they'll just leave that one alone because it's a little sensetive.
- 7:55Speaker 2: I hope they don't do it. It's a simple thing called
- 7:58Speaker 2: the Laugher curve. And I think they've gone over the
- 8:00Speaker 2: top of the Africa on stamp detail land tax and
- 8:03Speaker 2: they need to reduce them outs where it was working
- 8:06Speaker 2: perfectly fine for many, many years, but they keep on
- 8:09Speaker 2: reading the honeypot and now they've got a situation where
- 8:12Speaker 2: clearly they've basically killed the profiting market. So this type
- 8:16Speaker 2: of government cannot help but resist the temptation of an
- 8:21Speaker 2: enables resistantation in the sense of always wanted to tinker
- 8:24Speaker 2: with something. And there's a lot too much noise in
- 8:28Speaker 2: the press and various different traveling has being floated, so
- 8:31Speaker 2: suggest they aren't going to have a look at it
- 8:33Speaker 2: some stage. I hope they avoid it. I hope they
- 8:35Speaker 2: keep things simple because virtual all the suggestions so far,
- 8:39Speaker 2: if we replace one thing, they have to place with
- 8:41Speaker 2: five other different things. And the consequences and.
- 8:45Speaker 1: The warriors, of course, is that they bring they say
- 8:47Speaker 1: they're going to replace something with something, and then they
- 8:49Speaker 1: just bring it in and layer it on top, which
- 8:51Speaker 1: is when you look at for example, you don't putting
- 8:53Speaker 1: capital gains tax on sales of taxes or a wealth
- 8:56Speaker 1: tax on more expensive houses, etc. You know that's just
- 8:59Speaker 1: going to be ladled on top of this apparently incomprehensible
- 9:02Speaker 1: stamp duty.
- 9:03Speaker 2: Correct. I don't think it's that incomprehensible. It's all I
- 9:06Speaker 2: would say is that, No, I don't think it is
- 9:09Speaker 2: the three different lawyers irritating, but giving selective advice to
- 9:12Speaker 2: each three of them is the reason why you get
- 9:14Speaker 2: yourself in these troubles. But the rest of us it's
- 9:17Speaker 2: not that difficult, okay.
- 9:18Speaker 1: Now, apart from property, the biggest pool of available cash
- 9:21Speaker 1: in the UK is in pensions, and we just talked
- 9:24Speaker 1: about it. Possibly one of the reasons why guilt yields
- 9:26Speaker 1: the rising is because the pension industry no longer wants
- 9:29Speaker 1: to or needs to hold quite so many long dated guilts.
- 9:32Speaker 1: But put that aside, that's still where the money is.
- 9:35Speaker 1: So if you were the chancellor, and if you're the
- 9:37Speaker 1: current chancellor, and maybe you'll be the one delivering the budget,
- 9:39Speaker 1: maybe it won't be. But nonetheless, if you're looking for money,
- 9:42Speaker 1: that is where the money is, right.
- 9:45Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there will be changes to the
- 9:48Speaker 2: amount we are allowed to put in each shirt. It's
- 9:50Speaker 2: currently sixty thousand. It slightly oddly went up for forty
- 9:54Speaker 2: thousand under Jeremy Hunt. I think they may almost certainly.
- 9:58Speaker 2: I think they will reduced that same time the forty
- 10:01Speaker 2: percent or forty five percent tax break. I suspect they
- 10:05Speaker 2: may want to blend that with the lower rate tax
- 10:09Speaker 2: at twenty and perhaps gople on one rate I'll say
- 10:13Speaker 2: around thirty percent. So I definitely think they will reduce
- 10:17Speaker 2: pension benefits in some says, I don't think you'll alter
- 10:21Speaker 2: how many people will will will save. I think most
- 10:25Speaker 2: employees will still put thirty percent in rather than the
- 10:28Speaker 2: forty percent may be enjoying. It's not a very nice
- 10:31Speaker 2: way of doing things, but I think it's a very
- 10:33Speaker 2: easy one. And because it's already bedded the system, and
- 10:36Speaker 2: allreading is changing the rate and change the amount you
- 10:38Speaker 2: put in, I think it'll be easy one. And they
- 10:40Speaker 2: can also very easily brush it off as a type
- 10:44Speaker 2: of thing labor government would do, making it more advantageous
- 10:47Speaker 2: for lower income people.
- 10:48Speaker 1: What about the amount of money that people come withdraw
- 10:51Speaker 1: tax free. I mean that's one that we know some
- 10:53Speaker 1: of the people inside the treasury are very unhappy about
- 10:56Speaker 1: that you can still withdraw well over a quarter of
- 10:58Speaker 1: a million quid tax free from mesion. It seems that
- 11:01Speaker 1: that would be a pretty easy way to raise money.
- 11:03Speaker 1: Take that down to fifty. I mean, obviously everyone's going
- 11:05Speaker 1: to hate you, but you know, I.
- 11:07Speaker 2: Think they'll void that one. I think that's harder than
- 11:10Speaker 2: it looks, and as you said, it would be egregiously unfair.
- 11:15Speaker 2: You know, if you put all this money into a pension,
- 11:18Speaker 2: you should be allowed to stick to the rules. What
- 11:20Speaker 2: you put in in the future is changed. That's a
- 11:22Speaker 2: different story, but very aggressive and taking away or something
- 11:25Speaker 2: you could you're allowed to do on Wednesday, and then
- 11:28Speaker 2: on Thursday you're not allowed to do it. I don't
- 11:29Speaker 2: think they will do that. I hope they they'll do that.
- 11:31Speaker 2: I think that's very unfair. Have you said that. I
- 11:34Speaker 2: have made sure I've taken mine out just in case,
- 11:37Speaker 2: have you Interesting?
- 11:38Speaker 1: Now, the one thing that's happening with all this guilt
- 11:40Speaker 1: market or bond market turmoil around the world is that
- 11:43Speaker 1: the gold price has gone berserk, something we've been telling
- 11:46Speaker 1: people's going to happen for nearly thirty years now, and
- 11:50Speaker 1: here we finally are success.
- 11:52Speaker 2: Yeah, we've broken up. It should continue to raise higher.
- 11:56Speaker 2: I note this time round, it's silver's going with it,
- 12:00Speaker 2: possibly even leading it. You could argue, but you know, look,
- 12:02Speaker 2: this is just a symptomatic of of we've got Trump
- 12:06Speaker 2: tariffs and possibly getting ruled out and what happens in
- 12:09Speaker 2: place if that was the case. You can see why.
- 12:14Speaker 2: You know, central banks allegedly, I'm not sure how you
- 12:16Speaker 2: can really trust this data, but they now hold more
- 12:18Speaker 2: gold than they do you as treasuries. You know, this
- 12:23Speaker 2: is a long standing trend, and you know, look, I
- 12:27Speaker 2: think there is not much to suggest that that gold
- 12:31Speaker 2: will not continue to do exactly what's been doing for
- 12:33Speaker 2: the last year or more, and it will probably be
- 12:35Speaker 2: continued to ahead higher as this world gets more complicated
- 12:38Speaker 2: and confusing, and indeed people are looking at stock markets
- 12:41Speaker 2: all time highs and thinking that doesn't make any sense.
- 12:44Speaker 2: With bond yields this hive as normally you would expect
- 12:46Speaker 2: that would hurt equities. Maybe that comes at some point.
- 12:49Speaker 1: Did you take that money to go out your passion
- 12:51Speaker 1: and shovel it end?
- 12:52Speaker 2: Gold? Spedule? A whole lot of it. I have put
- 12:56Speaker 2: it in other things. Some of it's all but not enough, clearly.
- 13:00Speaker 1: No, never enough, never enough. You know, for years and
- 13:02Speaker 1: years and years you talk about gold, you tell people
- 13:04Speaker 1: about gold, and then when it actually happens. Of course
- 13:06Speaker 1: you don't have enough gold, but as you say, it
- 13:08Speaker 1: does have interesting implications for the UKs dot market as well.
- 13:11Speaker 1: And of course, you know kept smaller caps that had
- 13:13Speaker 1: a fairly lousy beginning of the week. The footy one
- 13:16Speaker 1: hundred stocks absolutely fine. But nonetheless, if you're getting to
- 13:19Speaker 1: the point when you can get a better yield from
- 13:22Speaker 1: a bond than you can from an equity, things do
- 13:26Speaker 1: you begin to change, don't they?
- 13:27Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's a very interesting point. I mean, if
- 13:29Speaker 2: you think about it in unity terms, which we always
- 13:32Speaker 2: used to have to be forced into doing with our pensions,
- 13:35Speaker 2: these yields are very attractive. At some point people are
- 13:38Speaker 2: going to realize that this is a great opportunity to
- 13:41Speaker 2: lock in five points something yields and in a sort
- 13:46Speaker 2: of a tax efficient way, it can be even higher.
- 13:49Speaker 2: That is making more sense. And I don't know why
- 13:54Speaker 2: we don't make more of anuities and make it better regulated,
- 13:57Speaker 2: more visible, and more competitive. And I think that something
- 14:00Speaker 2: this government could do to help, if they wanted to
- 14:02Speaker 2: do something positive towards thevention industry.
- 14:06Speaker 1: What's the end game do you think, Marcus? I mean,
- 14:08Speaker 1: here we are we talk about the fiscal problems of
- 14:11Speaker 1: the UK. We talk about rising guilty als, we talk
- 14:14Speaker 1: about the gold price, etc. Is there any way that
- 14:17Speaker 1: we can pull back or weaves can pull back from
- 14:20Speaker 1: the brink, or do we look forward and say, actually,
- 14:22Speaker 1: things are going to get really nasty over the next
- 14:25Speaker 1: few years.
- 14:26Speaker 2: Well, I'm not too persimistic about the UK economy and
- 14:28Speaker 2: the context that what this government is doing, which is
- 14:31Speaker 2: not great is that they're shifting and all the spending into
- 14:35Speaker 2: the public sector away from the private sector. But the
- 14:37Speaker 2: private sector has actually been fairly resilient, or more resilient
- 14:40Speaker 2: this year than we should have expected. I do believe
- 14:43Speaker 2: the banking will have to layer interest rates, which will
- 14:46Speaker 2: in theory help, And I think that we are destined
- 14:49Speaker 2: for more than one percent but less than two percent
- 14:52Speaker 2: growth for the foreseeable But that isn't the end of
- 14:54Speaker 2: the world. We don't have the worst debt GDP though
- 14:57Speaker 2: some people think we have. We are not going anywhere
- 14:59Speaker 2: near the IMA. All these sock stories about the IMF
- 15:02Speaker 2: is fairly I'm understanding a couple of things. One, our
- 15:05Speaker 2: economy six lives in the world three trillion more is
- 15:08Speaker 2: too big to bail out. The IMF doesn't have a firepower.
- 15:11Speaker 2: It's not the right type of crisis. The IMF last
- 15:14Speaker 2: time bailos up more as we had a foreign currency crisis.
- 15:16Speaker 2: That are yeah, in a sense of current account deficit issue,
- 15:19Speaker 2: which which we still do to a degree, but not
- 15:22Speaker 2: to quite at the same extent. We are on our
- 15:23Speaker 2: own in the sense that France is even worse predicament
- 15:26Speaker 2: the LISTA has Germy to bail that out again.
- 15:28Speaker 1: Yeah, well that the IMF can't bail out France either,
- 15:31Speaker 1: and it.
- 15:31Speaker 2: Wouldn't be able to, and it wouldn't want to. That
- 15:33Speaker 2: would be up to Germy phrase. But you know, they
- 15:36Speaker 2: can't bail out either these huge economies, and nor could.
- 15:39Speaker 2: They're the wrong types of crisis. There's nothing the RMF
- 15:41Speaker 2: could suggest or do which would help anyway. So the
- 15:45Speaker 2: point is that we have to stop government spending rising
- 15:48Speaker 2: at the level it is. That is what has to break,
- 15:52Speaker 2: and this government has to realize it and will unfortunately
- 15:55Speaker 2: realize it sooner hopefully rather than later.
- 15:58Speaker 1: Well that will be interesting, be fascinating to see what
- 16:01Speaker 1: drives them to actually realize that and start doing something
- 16:03Speaker 1: about it. I'm slightly less optimistic than you, but Marcus,
- 16:08Speaker 1: anything else we should say before we finish.
- 16:10Speaker 2: Up, No, might I just think that this is unfortunately
- 16:14Speaker 2: going to be a long drawn out autumn with ever
- 16:17Speaker 2: more scared stories on what taxes, well taxes and various
- 16:20Speaker 2: other different things are going to come out, and it's
- 16:23Speaker 2: so unnecessary. Yeah, I sincerely hope that the banging stops
- 16:29Speaker 2: its active concerted tiding policy. We'll find out that on
- 16:32Speaker 2: the September the eighteenth. Hopefully the Federal Reservoi of cut
- 16:36Speaker 2: interest rates by then, and hopefully that means the banking
- 16:38Speaker 2: itself will will start thinking about that in November, and
- 16:40Speaker 2: then maybe, just maybe we'll be slightly better stage if
- 16:43Speaker 2: the OBR gives us a reasonably optimistic outlook on the economy. Brilliant.
- 16:49Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Marcus, and thank you for listening
- 16:51Speaker 1: to this week's Marin Talks Money debrief. If you like us,
- 16:54Speaker 1: rate to review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts
- 16:57Speaker 1: or so be sure to follow me in John on
- 16:58Speaker 1: x or Twitter at Mary inn sw and John underscoore Stappic,
- 17:02Speaker 1: and Marcus is at Marcus Ashworth. This episode was produced
- 17:05Speaker 1: by Somersati and Moses and Questions and comments on this
- 17:08Speaker 1: show and all our shows are always welcome our show.
- 17:11Speaker 1: Email is Marimaney at bloomberg dot net.