Hedge funds are the biggest con going - ask yourself this question "Which investor has made a fortune from investing in a hedge fund"? Now ask yourself "Which hedge fund manager have made a fortune from others investing in Hedge funds"?

The odds are stacked all one way - typical the fees are split in two ways a flat fee for AUM say 2% and an incentive fee typically 20% to reward performance.

So you have 1m to invest in a hedge fund and year one it makes 10% your position at the end of the year is

Seed Capital 1,000,000
10% gain 100,000
AUM fee (20,000)
Incentive (20,000)
Net 1,060,000

Year two it loses the gains it made in year one

Capital 1,060,000
Loss (100,000)
AUM fee (21,200)
Net 938,800

You have lost 61,200 but the hedge fund has made that for the priviledge of losing you the money!!

I got a statement from one of my ISAs the other day: over £5k in it – and £10 interest over a year. They've had over five grand of my money for a year and I get just £10. What the hell is the point?

The riskier ISA lost loads and has barely recovered – that was the 'safe' one.

How on earth is anyone supposed to save sensibly for the future?

Oh yes: you're supposed to become a financial wiz (gambler) and spend all the time when you're not working or shopping (to help the economy) on seeking out and understanding the 'best' deals and schemes around.

I had exactly the same around 1999/2000, took out two £5k ISA's on the promise (ok, salesmans promise) that in five years they would be worth at least double, after all, he could show me that in the previous five years they had trebled in value - it took five years for them to regain the value that they lost in the first two years, when I finally cashed them in I had a couple of hundred pounds profit to show and I consider myself lucky that I didn't need that money within those five years or I would have lost a boatload.

I have no doubt at all that the salesman got paid though, and the fund managers, etc, etc...

They will never see any of my money again, in fact my greatest dream is to win trillions on the lottery and then when I turn up at Camelots office and they introduce me to their "financial advisors" from Coutts I will ask for all the bankers to be removed from the room and then for a wheelbarrow to take my winnings home in - in hard cash.

Except, any amount of cash apart from trivial sums is no longer acceptable, nobody will take it off you, for fear of being labelled a money launderer. You'd have it in yer barrow - but couldn't spend it!

You're not supposed to save, you're supposed to spend to help the economy. Furthernmore, savers are paying for the financial crisis - because no one else can - and underwite the scrotes who borrowed so much pre-2008.

I think things are about to change though and interest rates rocket. That's why Mr Hammond has been (rightly) blaming individuals for the crisis.

It would have to be in brand new ten pound notes, I'd probably need a bigger barrow, so that when examining all 100,000 of them as I buy my million pound house in cash, the bank clerk and/or police fraud squad wouldn't be able to detect any drug contamination or any evidence at all that anyone had ever touched this money previously - I'm prepared to wait if they want to examine the money.

What would be even more fun would be to smear ink on your face and hands as you go to pay cash for the house and then as they are counting it ask them to be careful with certain bundles as they may still be a bit wet.

Although I agree savers are gradually losing their purchasing power, if the government hadn't stepped in and bailed out the banking system they would have nothing at all.

Secondly banks don't actually loan out the money of savers, as I've explained before they create new credit, brand new money, when someone borrows from them.

And in the best traditions of Jimmy Cricket [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/double-trouble-at-jp-morgan-traders-losses-could-exceed-7bn-7771347.htmlThere's more[/url

So what? That just means others have made an equivalent profit. (Mind you the scope for fraud is immense).