Friday, Dec 12, 2008
Financing Britain is an issue.
Spectator: The true extent of Britain's debt
How much is Britain’s true national debt? Gordon Brown says 37% of GDP, the ONS says 43% of GDP – but this is just government debt. The reason Britain is in so much trouble is that our corporate and household debts are huge. It is the combination that makes us such a credit liability – but no one has ever put together a combination.
Until now...
Posted by cornishman @ 04:09 PM (1003 views) Add Comment
12 Comments
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1. cornishman said...
G7 Countries - ratios of short-term external debt/GDP, 2003Q2 - 2008 Q2
2. enuii said...
Wowwwsa - 300% of GDP repayable external debt due by Xmas 2009.
Six times France and ten times the US level, or are the spectator making up these spectacular figures?
3. 51ck-6-51x said...
Somehow I think these numbers are misleading, as is suggested by the post script in the blog itself.
4. cornishman said...
I've looked into this a little more and the figures may be misleading. One of the comments on FT.com stated:
"Foreign Debt to GDP figure is a rather meaningless figure as some of these debts are taken up by finance companies (which UK has lots) and are mostly netted against other foreign currency asset."
Who knows what to believe?
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6. 51ck-6-51x said...
"Who knows what to believe?"
Funny you should say that cornishman - I have just received my copy of Knowledge and its limits by Timothy Williamson!
7. paul said...
"Arabs/Chinese get sick of buying IOU notes in devaluing sterling, and refuse to buy more debt at anything other than loan shark rates."
Knowing Gordon, rather than thinking about the value of sterling, he'll just borrow at the loan shark rates.
8. greytornado said...
The truth will always out as they say - personally I wouldn't even employ Gordon Brown to run a Public Lavatory.
9. crunchy said...
Print, Print, Print.
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