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...

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...

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...

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...

Prof. William Buiter, 21 September 2008: To get new capital into the banks, and to reduce leverage dramatically at the same time, I propose a mandatory debt-for-equity swap for all US financial institutions. For the most junior debt (subordinated or tier one debt), 100% could be swapped for equity. For more senior debt, the share of the notional or face value of the debt that is subject to compuls...

For the private sector to be too much in debt may be careless. For the public sector to be too much in debt may be inconvenient. For the banking sector to be too much in debt might be worrying. For all three to be too much in debt at the

debt is not nearly as high as the Tories claim and the need for debt reduction not nearly as pressing as the Tories say Who in buggery is saying anything at all about debt reduction? The current game is about stopping the national debt from spiralling ever upwards out of control. It’s about slowing the

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...

You do not solve a debt problem by adding new debt on top of old debt. Yet it seems that European officials are fixated on this approach, writes Mohamed El-Erian

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