United Kingdom
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If it was a real private market they'd let the firm fail and the investors would take a haircut. Then either someone who could turn a profit while running a decent/affordable service would take over; or the govt would.
We're stuck in the worst of both worlds where it's a privatised monopoly which is unable to fail.
Exactly correct. We need to let them all fail.
Then goodbye every UK resident's pension that are invested in the water companies.
That's why they're "too big to fail". You let them fail, you'll throw people who are about 40 to 50 years old into further reliance on the state pension.
Better to prosecute the C-level executives and take the company back into public ownership.
I've pondered on this a bit.
Maybe the funds that thought it was appropriate to put for-profit public utilities in a pension fund should be the responsible parties, along with the water company executives they put in position to facilitate the asset stripping.
That's something I'd like to see. Never going to happen in the UK.
In the 2008 financial crisis, I think Iceland was the only country to jail their irresponsible bankers.
A proper pension is diversified. They don't invest entirely in one sector of business.
Unless you'll managing your own pension in which case that's your fault.
That's a fair point I hadn't considered.
Out of interest I actually have just looked at how my pension is diversified and almost all of it is incredibly diversified. A lot I'd it is in pharmaceutical companies, and technology companies, but there's even investors in a company that makes things like electric fences and barbed wire, I guess because the barbed wire industry is not going to crash anytime soon.
If we are invested in water companies I can't find them, so they mustn't be a very significant percentage. And anyway why would they be? This scandal has been going on for so long that any pension management companies would have long since sold.