Financial Markets: Stability

Lord Kestenbaum Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kestenbaum (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for securing this vital debate, the urgency of which is of course prompted by an experiment in fiscal policy as calamitous as it was unprecedented.

Recent weeks offer a cautionary tale of how such mayhem—stemming in part from political incompetence—spirals, demanding costly intervention and creating misery for so many. As we survey the wreckage, we are left with two salutary observations. First, the nervous breakdown in the system, such as we saw in recent months, matters to every single household in the UK. Let us remember, these rising markets of recent years have been fuelled in some measure by a striking injection of personal finance from the retail investor. Market analysis suggests that small individual shareholders’ share of equity trading volumes in the largest stocks has climbed to 24%. Gone are the days when stock markets were the sole preserve of large institutional investors. So every time we hear phrases such as the markets are “correcting” or “repricing”, they are just euphemisms for the utter misery felt by large numbers of households in the country.

Market instability, as in the title of this debate, is not an economic technicality affecting the privileged few. It profoundly touches many millions of citizens. It is not uncommon for as much as 35% of a stock to be owned by everyday, small investors, often representing a meaningful percentage of their liquid assets. The Government would do well to be less zealous—certainly less frivolous—in toying with a system in which so many will be harmed if things go wrong.

These spillover effects are felt even more acutely in the housing market. Noble Lords will know the disastrous effect on mortgage rates—as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, suggested—following the mini-Budget and subsequent market meltdown. The numbers of those affected speak for themselves: 25 million homeowners in the UK have gained a home with the help of the mortgage sector, and let us remember that the UK has the highest total outstanding value of all residential mortgages in Europe. This is a country where homeowners are critically reliant on the stability of mortgage rates.

In those chaotic 12 days, we heard how the numbers spiralled. The catalyst for what played out in front of distraught mortgage holders is all too well known and worth repeating: the announcement of vast unfunded tax cuts, leading to ratings agencies taking fright, risk premia reacting accordingly and a spiralling yield on gilts that placed mortgages out of reach or, worse, unable to be serviced.

If my first observation is that the trauma in financial markets had a political catalyst, my second is that what lies beneath may be equally damaging. The entrenched view has been that, for the last 15 years, we have lived with a monetary experiment as a reaction to the disasters of 2008. Such an experiment comprised the dual anaesthetic of the unlimited printing of money together with near-enough zero interest rates—all designed, reasonably perhaps, to prop up markets.

However, the spillover effect on us all was, we must admit, that more risk was taken than was advisable: too much risk in our mortgages and too much illiquidity exposure in domestic expenditure, let alone what felt like unlimited government borrowing. A judicious appetite for risk was exceeded because the implicit message was twofold: we can always print more money and we can always keep interest rates low—so keep borrowing. In doing so, all involved forgot the golden rule that one day the music will stop and, when that day comes—and with it unaffordable mortgages and debt that cannot be serviced—the entire system is at risk.

Against this backdrop, we have had the calamity of recent weeks, which saw dramatic intervention by the Bank of England and the undignified spectacle of pension trade bodies rushing out statements to say that they believed UK pensions should be safe. It seems to me that the mere fact that such statements were required should be a cause for alarm. But this cannot be seen as a “Thank goodness that’s over” moment, which leads me to my conclusion.

The case I make today is that the trauma of recent market instability is both episodic and systemic. My concluding comment, however, is about something equally significant, namely a reckoning. The last time we experienced market shock of such magnitude was in the crisis of 2008. Perhaps the most important question posed in that tumultuous time was asked by our late Queen, who, not the first time, spoke for the entire nation when asking a group of economists, “If this crisis is so large and so far-reaching, how come you didn’t see it coming?”. We may well ask that again—and we do.

Some calm has been restored but the debris is everywhere, with unaffordable mortgages, new entrants to the housing market priced out and pensioners with hard-earned savings in funds that have lost meaningful, material value. Amid much talk of good judgment being restored, one cannot help feeling that the lasting consequence of this instability is that, ultimately, the British electorate will exercise their judgment and, when it comes, a reckoning will be made.