Merryn Somerset Webb

Tough gig.

Yes.

Yeah, so it is interesting.

We've got an interview coming out with Andy Haldane soon, who used to be the economist at Bank of England.

And one of the things that we talk about in that is something that we've talked about, I think, with Russell Napier and other people previously, which is about how household balance sheets are in really good shape.

The UK household sector was really deleveraged over the last decade.

And were they to feel confident, a lot of good economic stuff could happen in the UK, but they really, really don't.

Okay, so that's that bit of misery.

So much for optimism.

Thanks for that, John.

Let's move on briefly to talk about this business of pension mandation and this idea that pension funds could be forced to invest in particular areas of interest to the government.

And there's been some changes there in the House of Lords this week.

I didn't know you were usually anti the House of Lords, John.

Absolutely.

And it's worked very well for many, many hundreds of years, which maybe I'll leave it alone.

Anyway, that's not our area.

Yeah, we are not political.

On the subject of pensions, we were talking the other day, you and I, about NEST, the publicly backed pension fund that 13 and a half, 14 million people have their auto-enrollment pensions in and how we're not 100% impressed.

And you're writing about this week, but also there was a letter this week that went from the regulator to the pension funds warning them that they need to keep an eye on their liquidity and also that they will face or could face huge costs if they sell their pensions.

private assets.