Capital controls are making a comeback in the West

Many people think that strict government controls over their money are a thing of the past. They're not.

We've written here many times about the arrival of financial repression the various ways in which Western governments will attempt to erode the value of their debts over time by fiddling with inflation and one way and another forcing us all to invest in government debt.

There have been hints recently that our big pension funds will somehow end up invested in state infrastructure projects, but the review of the RPI about to get under consultation is a classic of repression.

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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.