The Tories have been talking about "Gordon Brown's Debt", but as far as I can see, the fiscal deficit is not the problem. Consider two great debts: one is the public debt, the debt held by our government; the other is the private debt, the debt held by businesses and private citizens. Lets say that the public debt is £500 billion and the private debt is £1,500 bi...

One sentence explanation on a U.S. sovereign debt default Maybe two. If there is n0 increase in the debt ceiling, the United States will not default on its debt, period! Despite the fear mongering and misinformation emanating from the White House and Democrats, the debt service on US treasury debt would be paid and non-essential programs and departments would be the places where funding would have...

No shilly-shallying from the leader of the opposition. "We're in this mess because of too much banking debt, too much personal debt and too much government debt," he says. He hates debt, especially when loaded on those least able to cope with it. Don't be a "tosser", spend less, he said in 2006. A serious man with a serious message. Some say that in these circumstances he might have thou...

So this was the Recession Budget surprise: a seven-year horizon with no debt repayment plan. Ha! Bet you didn't expect that. Britain is to be transformed from a low-debt country into a nation saddled with a wartime debt without having fought a war. And as for today's Brownie - it's one the Stern Review used: fake juxtaposition. Brown presents the splurge (or splutter: £9.2bn th...

If this government is to retain the debt market's confidence it must shed its reputation for overly optimistic forecasts and must also try to avoid rolling over a large amount of debt at any one time

The government forecasts net debt exceeding £1,000bn in four years' time, with rates of debt in excess of 1970s levels

These days you don't even get a nice certificate to keep A question we've been hearing a lot over the last few days is HTF is HMG ever going to repay all this debt it's taking on? The short answer is that it's not going to. Consider the history of HMG debt. On today's definitions, we've only got fully consistent stats going back to 1974-75. And this is how they look, ...

This article mentions that the ONS is adding the debt of RBS and Lloyds/HBOS to the National Debt as it considers them de facto nationalised companies. This raises the National Debt by £1.5 trn (£1,500,000,000,000). This, however, is a slightly misleading way of looking at things. The debts of the banks are being counted as government debt - but the assets of the bank are not being counted as na...

The State is saying that it will purchase Gilts - i.e. Government Debt - with the funds created by QE. This will mean that not only are the Pounds in our pocket devaluing, the Government can "show" that Government Debt has been reduced. In other words the Government debt is being pushed quite literally into our bank accounts and pay packets. It is Taxation by the back door, it taxes past earnings ...

Once again during the Budget Debate David Cameron has focused on debt levels. He keeps saying that the UK has an extraordinary debt level. Some perspective on this lie is provided by the fact that we entered the recession with the second lowest level of debt of any of the G7 countries. OECD figures for the calendar year 2009 give general government net financial liabilities as a percentage of GDP ...