Save Our Savers - Asking Government for a Fair Deal For Savers

With the Fed's recent mid-2013 pledge and many angry political comments in the blog posts, I thought it would be useful to mention Save Our Savers again. My last post on this group was in February 2010. It's a UK action group that has been advocating for a fair deal for savers. Here's an excerpt from the Save Our Savers website:

It is the right of every citizen to save to secure their future. It should be the aim of every Government to encourage saving and to protect savings from:

* Devaluation through inflation
* Unfair legislation and taxation
* Exploitative financial practices

We need a fundamental change of attitude towards savers from Government and the financial sector.

You might also be interested in one of their recent articles which describes the unfairness of taxing bank interest when deposit rates are lower than the inflation rates:

It really sticks in the throat that the prudent members of society, who want to save for their future or who have to live off the savings they built up, are effectively having their money stolen.

What is truly iniquitous, however, is that savers are not only losing money to the ravages of inflation, but also having to pay tax on their losses in the form of income tax on savings income. How can that possibly be fair?

They have an interesting petition which "calls for a suspension of income tax on savings interest, to remain in force while CPI inflation exceeds base rate" (base rate is the equivalent to our Fed funds rate).

Your Opinions on Government Policies?

I'm glad to see the Save Our Savers website is still active, but the site doesn't seem to be growing that popular. I'm afraid in both the UK and in the US, borrowers get much more attention than savers. When the economy weakens, the government's focus is not on helping savers. Back in the 2001 recession the Greenspan-led Federal Reserve slashed interest rates. Now the Bernanke-led Fed has followed these same policies (albeit at a more extreme level).

As I mentioned last year, we need a Save Our Savers group here in the US. However, I don't see saver-friendly government policies any time soon. So I'll keep my focus on finding the best deals for savers.

If you have opinions on what the government should or shouldn't do, you can comment on this blog post. For the other blog posts, please try to stay on topic in your comments so we can focus on finding the best places for our money.