Why Nick Clegg's housing scheme won't work

The coalition's latest scheme to put housing within reach of first-time buyers is so ridiculous, it's easy to lose track of the many reasons why it can't work. So, here's a list.

John Stepek wrote a humdinger of a Money Morning this morning: This crackpot scheme proves that British houses are too expensive. One tweet even called it "his best essay yet". So what kicked off this particular bit of brilliance?

You can read it here but it was of course the idiotic suggestion from the Lib Dems that those with pension savings should use them to secure mortgages for their offspring in order that those offspring are better able to participate in the Ponzi scheme that is the UK property market.

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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.