Wednesday, May 23, 2007
UK has 2nd highest debt in the known world.
Firstrung: Britain takes the silver medal in 'debt Olympics'
UK $8,280,000,000,000 from 66 Million People
US $10,040,000,000,000 from 300 Million People
World $44,610,000,000,000 from 6.6 Billion People
Oh Yeah!!!
Posted by nearly30 @ 08:47 PM (168 views) Add Comment
21 Comments
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1. nearly30 said...
Yes - look for yourself!!!!
UK $8,280,000,000,000 from 66 Million People
US $10,040,000,000,000 from 300 Million People
World $44,610,000,000,000 from 6.6 Billion People
Oh Yeah!!!
What the f@ck!!!!
2. uncle chris said...
And who said we were no good at anything!
Anyway, no need to worry - there's a little known piece of government legislation that allows you to run up massive debts maintaining a lifestyle you can ill afford and then walk away leaving others to pick up the pieces. I'm sure we can arrange an IVA with the rest of the world, lye low for a year or two and then start again - thanks Gordon!
3. Observer said...
We have been living in a world of spin for the past 10 years.Where once we complained about the Germans invading nice 5 star hotels with their " towels", we now have a bunch of home grown morons capable of borrowing vast sums of money and parading their Joe builder image with a set of expensive golf clubs to the rest of the world.They also show our culture to the spaniard and the Potuguese the way it should be " mine's a f%%c33g pint mate and ave one for yourself". I got tons of money ain't I???????
4. tyrellcorporation said...
Per person don't we take the Gold medal position?
5. Scott said...
Tyrell is right. That is what I was thinking. Per person we are top, and this works out to $125,455 per person approx £63k per head. Jesus f*cking H christ!!
6. nearly30 said...
tyrellcorporation - absolutely!
$125K per person in UK (Man/Woman/Child)
$34K per person in US (Man/Woman/Child)
7. Mr Crabs said...
Do the numbers!
Per capita we are 3.7 times more in debt than the US, and 18.5 times better at getting into debt than the rest of the world.
I think it's tripple platinum (not silver). Infact sod football, cricket and rugby, this should be the new national sport, 'Spending made up money, on stuff we can't really afford'. Anyone got a better name for it?
8. enuii said...
Hang on, lets remove the children, retired people (generally little debt) and those who are not economically active (not credit worthy) and look at the working population. If we make a generous assumption that there are 35 million people economically active in the country to pay the debt then we get a mind boggling average of ~£236000 which is 10x the average wage.
I suspect that these figures include more than personal debt and may include the governments as well.
9. Deadspider said...
Is this Net or Gross ?
10. Nickolarge said...
My personal debt is nigh on 400k but that is joint with my wife. I don't know anyone who matches that figure so I would imagine this includes all types of debt. On the CIA site it describes it as external debt but I'm not sure exactly what that means.
11. Pr said...
It may also have something to do with the strength of Sterling.
12. sold 2 rent 1 said...
From Wikipedia
External debt (or foreign debt) is that part of the total debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. The debtors can be the government, corporations or private households. The debt includes money owed to private commercial banks, other governments, or international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
For proper debt analysis you need to look at total debt
13. japanese uncle said...
Ladides and gentlement, now the full scope of the weight and length of the chains around the neck of John Ebenezer Bull is revealed by cinerama. How farther we have come, haven't we? Binge borrowing really should have stopped as of the millennium. The lost decade for Britain could well be lost decades, though it is basically none of my business as I am neither in debt nor UK citizen. My only concern is the potential default of any British financial institutions, which has now become a clear and present danger.
After all there is no cure for idiocy and this applies not only to UK but also to Japan, I mean Japan is about to ditch its long beloved pacificts constitution forbidding any acts of war by the government. I am utterly speechless! Again there will be a bloody war and invasion, into where this time around? God knows.
14. Rover2000 said...
Doubtless they will come up with some ludicrously inflated total asset figure and say "thats ok then, it balances out!"
15. nearly30 said...
Whatever the measure of debt - you have to say that such a small island of 66 million shouldn't be in that much debt - esp. when we don't make anything and 72% of our economy is Services (and debt).
Oh dear - this can't end well.
16. japanese uncle said...
Indeed, but UK's business is not only service and debt, but servicing the debt, whereby British way of life is effectively ruled by banks. And this malady is quickly spreading throughout the world.
17. dohousescrashinthewoods said...
The umbers are staggering anh the method is circular.
QED the lost generation - and the government is in no better shape than the Joneses people are trying to keep up with.
How about: 'Spending made up money, on stuff we can't afford that we wouldn't really want if we hadn't heard on the news that other people were getting some'.
18. sold 2 rent 1 said...
On the plus side these external debt figures do say that the banks with the most exposure to collapse are foreign (non-UK) banks.
The US on the other hand appears to have most of its debt as internal (approx 38 trillion or 80%).
It might be a good idea to get your money out of US banks.
19. Ticktock said...
It might be a good idea to get your money out of US banks
A non US owned bank?
Is there such a thing?
20. Andy H said...
Okay, some rough debt analysis from a non-expert. I’ve been following these figures for a couple of years.
External debt is stuff owed to external people. This has to be paid back with interest.
Public sector debt in UK isn’t that high. 42% of GDP comes out at about £half a trillion.
Private sector debt in the UK is massive. As a % of GDP we probably win the gold medal. If we take off the public debt it is almost four times our GDP.
The government made a decision a few years back to encourage private debt to stop a recession rather than spend its way out of trouble via massive public debt.
If this debt is repaid over 25 years and this costs 2.5 times the original loan (long term average for a typical mortgage) then the UK needs to find $830 billion a year to fund the debt. This is about £400 billion in an economy only worth £1 trillion.
If interest rates go up then the indebted will suffer a lot. If interest rates go above the long term average (like they do for a large chunk of the time, that is the thing about averages) then the consequences will be very bad.
The value of everything in the UK is something like £6 trillion so this country is getting to the point that we owe more then we own. A large amount of this wealth is housing and land- which is only worth that much because people are willing to pay that much for it.
The CIA book of facts where this data comes from is really useful as it is not subject to UK spin.
Andy
21. Russ said...
I think it would be more interesting to look at *personal* debt levels than external debt.
These figures here reflect government borrowing etc, which although interesting is not that relevant to the future path of house prices.
From what I can recall we are slightly in front of the US in terms of personal debt per head. Which given our lower incomes and higher cost of living contriubtes to our lower standard of living.