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"A primary school every 20 minutes.."
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:53 am
by max_tranmere
I've just heard Nick Clegg say on TV that Britain's borrowing is so high that it costs the nation that same as it would cost to build a primary school every 20 minutes. That's quite troubling. I would like to know how we ran up such a huge national debt, people always say it was the bank bailouts but I heard that cost just ?66 billion - of a debt that is one trillion pounds. So if the bank bailouts account for less than 7% of the national debt, where did the other 93% of the debt come from? I can only assume it was those two illegal wars and Labour running the economy very badly.
Max
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 9:07 am
by David Johnson
Nick Clegg is a Tory idiot who would sell his granny for a fiver if it kept him in power.
To answer your question, refer to the post below and follow the link to the graph referenced.
http://bgafd.co.uk/forum/read.php?f=3&i=233721&t=233703
The secret to understanding the global recession is the word, "global".
Cheers
D
Re: "A primary school every 20 minutes.."
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:56 am
by beutelwolf
max_tranmere wrote:
> I would like to know how we ran up such a huge
> national debt, people always say it was the bank bailouts but I
> heard that cost just ?66 billion - of a debt that is one
> trillion pounds. So if the bank bailouts account for less than
> 7% of the national debt, where did the other 93% of the debt
> come from? I can only assume it was those two illegal wars and
> Labour running the economy very badly.
No, it is largely the bank bailout. It's not 66 billion, the most commonly quoted figure is 850 billion, though various figures have been given ranging between 800bn and 1tn.
I presume the difference between those figures is (i) the cost of buying (shares) of those banks and (ii) the cost for underwriting the toxic debt. It's the latter that's the real killer.
Yes, these two wars haven't helped (I would not have called the Afghanistan campaign illegal [merely misguided], there was UN support after all - Iraq is another matter), but the big one are the banks.
Regarding Labour running the economy badly, I am not so sure that made a huge difference, except of course regarding the loosening of the controls of the financial sector. Those public-private-partnership schemes to finance schools, hospitals and the like, will come home to roast budgets of the future, but again it's all small fry compared to the bailout.