How you will play your part in refinancing the post-Covid economy

All this stimulus has to be paid for – whether through inflation, tax rises, or financial repression. It's going to be an uncomfortable experience, says Merryn Somerset Webb, watching your wealth get eaten away.

Rishi Sunak
Rishi Sunak: dealing with the debt won’t be easy – for investors
(Image credit: © Guy Bell/Shutterstock)

Now is not the time. That’s what everyone says about sorting out the public finances. They’re right. Of course it isn’t. But just because it isn’t time to do it, doesn’t mean it isn’t time to talk about it. There is a group (supporters of Modern Monetary Theory – MMT) who believe that debt doesn’t matter. If you have your own central bank, they say, you can print as much as you like and just use taxes to slow down the economy if inflation begins to tick uncomfortably high. We don’t buy this – and we don’t think chancellor Rishi Sunak does either.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.