Evening Standard: "Fixing a system that just isn’t working"

Link to Evening Standard

"Pension funds and other shareholders had average returns from investing in equities after inflation of 4% to 5% in the 40 years up to the millennium. 

"But in the 12 years since then, the stock market has returned just 1%.

"... Paul Woolley, a fund manager-turned-academic, [says] in answer to a question at a conference in November, that in his view, the system should shrink to just a third of its size and would still meet all the needs of the real economy.

"Everything above this is driven by the excess profit resulting from dysfunctional markets. The logic of his position is that more than half the vast edifice of the City is about wealth transfer — skimming off the cream — rather than wealth creation, and of no benefit and indeed probably harmful to the wider economy. 

"Crudely speaking, that banker’s bonus has come at the expense of your pension fund. 

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(Update at Evening Standard)