Ritual victim
HYPOCRISY makes the City go round, but I am sorry to see it find a victim in Michael Hawkes, chairman of Kleinwort Benson. He has evidently done penance at the Bank of England for his firm's sugges- tion that mortgage finance could be used to buy a boat or pay school fees. Now Kleinwort has had to take its scheme off the market. We all know that anyone with enough sense to come out of the rain will arrange his borrowing so as to get as much tax relief as possible on the interest. Why have a £5,000 mortgage and a £5,000 overdraft when you could have a £10,000 mortgage and no overdraft? In the same way, any financial salesman would wrap up his product in a life assurance policy until Nigel Lawson boldly cut that tax relief out. The Bank of England, of all institu- tions, should not be shocked to find that money flows downhill.
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