The news that the Government is now looking to sell off assets to fund its huge amount of debt is to be partly welcomed. I welcome it because many of the proposed assets should not have been in Government hands in the first place - can anyone think why the Government should own a betting company?
I add caution though. The sale will occur near the bottom of the market for many of these assets, they should have been sold when we were booming to help to pay off accumulated debt. If Gordon Brown was a spread better or trader he'd lose so much money. Just take a look at how much he got for the nation's gold reserves when he sold them off at a quarter of the current price. Maybe the Tote isn't best placed in his hands!
The other point is that you can only sell them off once. This does nothing to bring down the structural deficit. As an example, we would have to sell off the assets identified every month to break even! They still need to outline a plan for cutting costs.
Squiffy.
No comments:
Post a Comment