[Archived] UK National Debt

[Claytons Left Boot]

This has now surpassed £1.285 trillion! Where do you start to attempt to pay that back?

Well, you don't really. You just bide your time before the country implodes.

Great piece in the Money Week magazine, titled The End Of Britain. It's actually quite frightening. Google it.

Have a look at www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk and watch how the debt (or effective interest roll up) increases at more than £5k per second!

If any of you out there in your 20s or 30s think you'll receive a state pension, think again.

[thenodrog]

First things first......... Given the debt at BRFC who cares about that?

[jim mk2]

That Money Week article has been around for ages - there's plenty of evidence around saying it's a load of rubbish.

[Guest Norbert]

Hope you're right Jim, that sounds up there with the USA and we don't have anywhere near the industrial muscle to pull it back. Anyway, I'd be straight onto the tax loopholes that allow people and companies with loads of cash to move the money they earn in this country if I was Chancellor. That'll be quite a few billion £ right there.

[Stuart]

Ironic having a 'real time' clock working on an average figures.

At that rate, it makes the austerity drive a pretty pointless effort. Well, unless of course you are rich, or a member of the cabinet. Or a rich member of the cabinet.

[Guest Norbert]

We're all in this together don't you know?

[DE.]

That Money Week article has been around for ages - there's plenty of evidence around saying it's a load of rubbish.

Correct. A very obvious scare-mongering piece designed to ramp up subscriptions to their magazine.

The UK's debt is a huge concern but as long as we retain our place in and around the top of the global food chain we won't have to worry. Once we lose that spot, then panic.

[Steve Moss]

Correct. A very obvious scare-mongering piece designed to ramp up subscriptions to their magazine.

The UK's debt is a huge concern but as long as we retain our place in and around the top of the global food chain we won't have to worry. Once we lose that spot, then panic.

So it's kind of like the USA and the UK are in the Premier League. So long as we stay there, we're fine but the second we have a reversal and are down, then we're toast?

As we learned from our club's most recent troubles, this is not an impossibility. I wish we'd get the debt under control.

[DE.]

So it's kind of like the USA and the UK are in the Premier League. So long as we stay there, we're fine but the second we have a reversal and are down, then we're toast?

As we learned from our club's most recent troubles, this is not an impossibility. I wish we'd get the debt under control.

Kind of, yes. Although for the UK I think even slipping to mid-table would ramp up some serious financial pressure.

[JAL]

That Money Week article has been around for ages - there's plenty of evidence around saying it's a load of rubbish.

But who does the country pay its debts too ?

Is there a plan, is this it, is the aim to grow the debt substantially more than it already is, then whoever it is, profits from this for generations to come and have us as a financially captured island.

[Guest Norbert]

We (and other countries) take loans out from other countries, usually China nowadays, or if things get really bad the IMF and/or the World Bank get involved.

A prime example was the post-WW2 reconstruction that was helped (and hindered) by a massive $3 billion loan from the USA, that was paid back in about 2006. They also formed the 'Marshall Plan' that mainly helped the rest of Western Europe, as a free and wealthy Europe is a good market for US goods, and less likely to turn Communist out of desperation.

[jim mk2]

We (and other countries) take loans out from other countries, usually China nowadays, or if things get really bad the IMF and/or the World Bank get involved.

A prime example was the post-WW2 reconstruction that was helped (and hindered) by a massive $3 billion loan from the USA, that was paid back in about 2006. They also formed the 'Marshall Plan' that mainly helped the rest of Western Europe, as a free and wealthy Europe is a good market for US goods, and less likely to turn Communist out of desperation.

.... by Gordon Brown.

[Guest Norbert]

Well we were paying back before that too. Brown was in number 11 when the last payment was due, or may have sped it up a bit.