Why every bank will soon be a tax collector for every government everywhere

Governments around the world are turning to financial repression to pay their national debts. And now a new American-born tax could be about to take it to a whole new level.

Financial repression. A few years ago when a few people (Gillian Tett, Russell Napier, etc) started predicting that it would be the thing that made our crisis go away, not many were convinced. The phrase refers to the various methods that hideously indebted governments use to channel the money knocking around an economy to itself rather than anywhere else.

It can include anything from capping interest rates on government debt or deposit rates (as seenall over the world at the moment); forcing institutions to buy government debt; or, at its most obvious, putting in capital controls to prevent anyone taking their money out ofthe country.

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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.