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“Britain owes more than £900 billion to investors at home and abroad. The Government says our debt will hit £1,043 billion by April 2011 and £1.2 trillion just one year later. Yes, that really is £1,216,000,000,000. To pay this year's £43 billion interest bill, every household will stump up more than £1,800 in tax. That's not a joke - that really is how much it's going to cost you. The UK's national debt has become so astronomical that it's hard to make sense of it anymore” (source - UK Debt Bombshell.com). RK kindly sent us a couple of deeply interesting links. The first is the US Debt Clock. It shows all the financial information any American could possibly want to know about his country, and all the figures are constantly updating themselves in real time. It's clever, and fascinating, and would be even more fascinating if we knew what the hell it all meant. Then there's the World Debt Clock. Here we can see our “public debt to GDP ratio” - in other words, presumably, how much our government has borrowed as a percentage of how much we earn. The figure for the UK is 81%, more than Germany and less than France. But the really alarming figure is our “external debt to GDP ratio”. Other countries have percentages like 93% (Australia), 70% (Canada) or 99% (USA). Ours is a wopping 387%. Trouble is, we don't really know what this means. Is it money we (businesses and individuals) have borrowed from other countries? In that case, it's terrifying. And why is our figure so much higher than any other country? Only Ireland has a higher figure at 1,107%. Countries like Brazil, China and India have tiny figures by comparison. Or does this represent the amount of money other countries have invested here? That would put a different complexion on things, presumably. But then, why would other countries invest so heavily in Ireland, of all places? If you can sense a touch of confusion in the Grumpy Brain, that's because we don't have a clue what we're talking about here. In RK's words, we “follow our fellow sheep and revert to expressing ignorant outrage at large figures” - that sums it up rather well, we thought. Is there anyone out there who does understand it, and could write for us a simple explanation? By “simple” I mean no words of more than three syllables, and a comprehension level roughly equivalent to that of the average dolphin, Millwall supporter or Daily Mail reader. If it's long, email it to us and we'll publish it provided that we understand it ourselves. If it's short, post it in our Guest Book. Offerings roughly along the lines of “It means we're stuffed” aren't good enough. Accurate no doubt, but not good enough. We could have told you that. either on this site or on the World Wide Web. Copyright © 2011 The GOS |
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