no accountant

The EU will probably fall to pieces soon, so we won't be in it for long. More importantly, it is really worth us slogging our guts out to pay tax to repay these bonds, when we could just cancel them like the article says? The existing bondholders are then even more likely to be repaid, hence yields might drop further. (Unless the market thinks will do it again and cause proper inflation...)

The one and only good thing that Gordon Brown did was nothing i.e. to keep us out of the euro. Blair would have had us in, as would the Lib Dems.

Why not? If they devalue by 60% then almost all tourist going to the Med would go there, and they have full employment before the summer's out. I getting ready on Hire Your Own Island for Week buy button.

exactly, I read at succinct piece in City AM: Utopian dreams of political union leave no place for stability in the EU

Very true. An ironic. Who are these bond 'vigilantes' that dare not to buy our bonds. The like of Pimco and other big bond funds. Who are they to say they no longer want to buy our bonds? We should track down these people and hold them to account !

Portugal raids pension funds to meet deficit targets Hungary, Ireland, now Portugal. Another few years, will this be the UK too? That's the trouble with pension saving - your money isn't really yours. You can't take it out of the system, as least without large penalties.

Exactly right. The boring retail banks, with regional lending officers and bank managers - they lent far too much money. Likewise the borrowers borrowed too much. The world was punch drunk on cheap money. Cheap money proved by central bankers. (the focus of hatred seems to be on traders and dealers in the City, who were nowhere near these poor lending decisions, they just buy and sell bonds and shares. They don't risk a bank's cash by lending it out, this is what local bank managers are meant to do)

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How Did We Get Here? It's All Thanks To The <CENTRAL> Banksters The Fed was created in 1913, a private company that set interest rates too low : result -> roaring 20s, credit boom -> Great Depression The Fed / ECB / MPC set interest rates too low : result -> roaring naughties -> massive credit boom -> Great Contraction Go figure. The government appoints the central bankers to set interest rates, and they are meant to make sure the economy doesn't 'overheat'. Guess what. They ****'d up. PS what would the world be like without a government to set interest rates for you? What would you demand on your savings, given a free market in banking? Would you like 2% or 8%? How much reward for the risk to lend your money out? Why have you given this power to set your interest rate to someone else? Who are they to determine the rate?

[quote name=Oh Well ' timestamp='1317844717' post='3138838] 6. he is a kunt and he fabricates scientific experiments to aid his dodgy films: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replication-suggests-that-al-gores-climate-reality-project-fabricated-their-climate-101-video-simple-experiment/

Indeed, and they've have only got away with it until now because there pension savers turned to investing in the only thing 'guaranteed' to pay you money back - Japanese Gvt Bonds. Their buying of government debt has supportredf the crazy government 'make work' schemes for 20 years. But now the tide is turning as the demographics mean the savers want their money and want to sell JGBs. So the gvt will have have to sell even more bonds to someone else to fund their deficit spending, and to pay back their domestic investors. Who? Will you buy them? I'd buy them at a yield of 30% or so. They will default. And sooner than you think. The sun is setting over Japan too. Reuters News Story - GPIF sells JGBS

Hear hear. As soon as we take away more that half of someone's earnings that sounds like communism to me. We should address why public spending is 52% of GDP. That's the problem. Even communist China is only 23%!

You can expect more (some) growth and more tax revenue collected overall. Whether it will trickle down to the lazy looters in this country is more a question for them. Anyone on PAYE, surgeons, lawyers etc will pay it. People who think taxing the rich will get us out of this hole are deluded. We need to get everyone working, creating real value for the economy. 200bn of our spending goes on benefits. If people on benefits worked and supported themselves instead the problem is solved. Dump the non-jobs and no-jobs, and start the real jobs.

What happened to entrepreneurship? If you take 52% (incl NI) of someone's hard earned money, it not much of an incentive is it? The only way out of this financial debt hole is growth. The 50% tax rate doesn't raise extra revenue, so let's get rid of it and try get some businesses set up and working.

Japan's enormous debt pile is at a turning point. As mentioned above the Japanese have been buying their government's bonds to fund a secure retirement. This allows the government to issue debt at very low yields to fund their crazy deficit spending. However as people age and begin to retire they will want to sell their bonds for cash. So how will the government raise funding - who can they sell their bonds to? This year, for the first time ever, pension funds are becoming net sellers of Japanese Government Bonds Pension Funds Become net Sellers The rot has started. Soon they will have to look to foreign investors, who will require a higher yield to entice them to buy the bonds. Then Japan massive debt pile (some 200% of GDP) will quickly become unsustainable, just as Greece and Italy are experiencing now. "The dilemma stems from years of Keynesian and Monetarist stupidity" The sun sets on the Rising Sun.

But why would a house hold it's real value if there's fewer and fewer people around to buy it? Japan is already a long way down this road with house prices falling for almost 20 years as the population retires.

That will last for a few years, then it's all gone. Then what? Even if the remaining workers gave 100% of their income to the state they're still wouldn't be enought, (as most people would have left the country !)

The sell off in Italian bonds is entirely rational. Yes their level of debt is no higher now than is was 10 years ago (as a percent of GDP) , however, the chance of them being able to pay it off diminises all the time. The Euro has hidden these risks as everyone thought it would hold together. Now we're not sure. With fewer and few people of working age having to support more and more retirees they is no way they can pay more tax or cut spending. Quite the opposite in fact, as more spending is needed to support the older people and there's fewer people working and paying tax. There's a good article about the same thing in the US: Batten Down the Hatches: A Hurricane of Debt, Deficit and Demographics is Coming Hence the enivitable default. So who would be crazy enough to buy a house?

.. that is forgetting they have to pay back a debt of 150% of GDP...

.. Which would all be fine if public spending was in line with the slack tax enforcement - i.e. around 28% of GDP (the deficit is around 12% isn't it?) How does a population who doesn't pay tax expect expensive public services? (my personal view is that the correct amount to spend is 30% to 35% of GDP - high enough for decent public services, and low enouugh that hard-working successful people are happy enough to pay the tax) edit- so actually if they can raise 7% more tax (from 28 to 30% of gdp) and reduce public spending by 25% (from 40% to 30% of GDP), problem solved.

ah, found it. Greece spends only 40% of GDP on the public sector. Much less than our 53%. Yes of course you have to balance the budget with tax, and we have docile population that normally pays it taxes (why?). But it's incredibly difficult to reduce public spending - it's the easiest thing in the world to increase it. Look at the protests in the UK, and we're not actually technically reducing spending yet, at least not in cash terms. I'll think we'll be in the same situation as Greece in a couple of years.

I wouldn't lend this man any money at any interest rate! Still, the UK isn't far off when it comes to public sector spending as a percent of GDP. We're at 53%, where are they at the moment?

Oh my god! It might be worse than Three Mile Island?!! ... how many people died because of Three Mile Island? http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_died_in_the_three_mile_island_accident zero. Yes that's right. Not one person. How many died in the Tsunami? 15 thousand or so? And no one even talks about them..

Exactly. We should put the Central bankers i.e. the MPC and their political masters on trial. A massive house boom and bust, massive increase in private debt. Crazy. Why did they let it happen? Why didn't they raise the rates? The bailout of RBS +Lloyds only cost us a net 10bn, out of an annual deficit of 160bn. Small fry. That's 0.75% of GDP. Why is everyone so angry? The government wastes more than that in a week!

+1 India will likely be richer than us soon. Why don't they give us some aid? For example to help with the 25,000 people in the UK that die of cold-related illness every winter - preventable deaths?