UK government debt hits £2trillion for first time

UK government debt hits £2tn for first time

I wonder what the interest payments on that are? Surely it must have reached such a critical mass that we're never going to be able to pay it back? I imagine higher taxes are on the way, and Sterling will weaken on the money markets. Our credit rating will take a beating as well.

 

I blame Brexit …… (Oops too early??)

 

That's nothing. The U.S. debt is rapidly approaching 30 trillion dollars (which would be about £23 trillion)! This is not going to end well.

 

Who do we owe all this money to?

The fact that the UK & US together owe £25,000,000,000,000 - someone somewhere must be very wealthy to be able to lend that.

 

It was only a matter of time before the financing of furlough, lack of commercial income and consequences of lockdown would hit home.
Higher Taxes were always going to be the quick-fire reason and 'seemingly' justifible reason = and alas, methinks it is the common folk (those on the frontline who have had to carry on 'essential' working - on their lower wage structure that'll end up paying for it)

 

Where do governments borrow money?

 

You can bet that's true, as long as the Tories are in power.

 

Last year the US GDP was $20.5trillion, here in the UK ours was $2.8trillion. So relative to GDP the UK has a roughly equivalent debt to the US.

Countries by GDP (Nominal) 2019 - StatisticsTimes.com

 

This never gets explained in the media properly

First off, UK private debt is a far bigger worry, and that was at £2 trillion before the pandemic, at business loan / home mortgage to credit card interest rates

Government debt isn't as much of a worry as it's usually low interest, 0 - 3% and the UK owns most of its own debt, and includes things like calculations on all the pensions the government has to pay back n the foreseeable future


Runaway private debt is usually the one that causes global financial crises

It won't be until a couple quarters after you stop furloughing workers and stop protecting from evictions that everyone will feel the true financial impact of the pandemic

You will have a whole bunch of businesses that will close, and default on loans, a whole bunch of landlords that will default, and a whole bunch of workers not furloughed anymore that start to default on loans and credit cards; all at the same time

That will wipe out most banks

 

I still think that the REAL problems stems from sending all our money along a one way street to China over the last 2 decades, while our own manufacturing industries fell apart.
Covid may only be the straw that breaks the camels back, but no one is ever going to admit that the writing was already on the walls.

What frustrates me, is that a schoolchild could have seen this coming.
Meanwhile, I will continue spelling "Banker" with a "W"

 

Take a look at my reply to VG.

 

That's the inevitable result of capitalist globalisation. Countries with lower employee wages are able to undercut companies in richer countries. If people want cheaper goods regardless of their origin then manufacturing will move to those countries.

 

... unless we level the playing field with tariffs. Then it won't matter where the goods are manufactured, and many of those manufacturers will choose to operate near their customers.

 

Yes, but globalisation, the current model, is all about free trade.

 

It has happened for decades with countries such as India, but the trade is reciprocal, so it balances out.
With China, who import virtually nothing from the west, governments need to impose taxes to balance the books.
We elect them to protect our interests, so it is time that they did their job, rather than taxing us for parking a car outside our own house.

 

For the past 10 years we have elected successive Tory governments. Tory ideology is all about free trade economics, so that is what we have got. The Blair era wasn't much different. We had two opportunities to vote in a Corbynite government who may have imposed some restrictions on international free trade, but that's not what the public wanted.

 

Only because people here didn't understand what Jeremy's policies were all about and the rabid mass media tainted him with Marxist/communist epithets and ran scare tactics against him.

 

I think the main reason he lost the second time was due to his wishy-washy policy over Brexit. People were sick of it and they wanted it over and done with.