the big money hole

[jacksprat16]

can someone tell me in simple terms (cos i am simple ) .......
we owe one trillion pounds + and other Euro countries not far off that,
but who do we owe it all too,who lends us all this money in the first place ??

[jno]

everyone borrows from everyone but I think it's basically China keeping other countries afloat.

http://www.realclearw...na_needs_us_debt.html

[BillyBB]

Two minute explanation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyePCRkq620

[jake-the-peg]

How much we owe depends on how you do the figures. UK national debt is about £900 million.

You can get over 1 trillion if you add in a bunch of things like pensions that we don't have to borrow for now (that's what the Centre for Policy studies have done - they're a right wing think tank)

Think of it this way though - £1 Trillion is about £16,000 per person.

Now that's quite a lot of money but it's nothing compared to what many people owe already - and it's nothing compared to what we owed after the war.

It also doesn't account for assets that we spent the money on - The Government stake in Llyods -TSB alone is about £15 Billion

What is important is to make sure that figure is going down and not up and a lot of doing that is making sure that the economy grows.

Growing economy -> more tax revenue + less benefit claimants

Cutting spending too harshly will give you a vicious circle of more unemployment and less tax revenue that's what happened in the early 80s

But back to your original question.

Governments issue bonds called gilts - these are promisses to pay back with interest in x years.

These are bought and traded by investments houses and banks and pension firms.

If you want a real shock realise this

We borrowed all this money to bail out the financial sector and prevent a depression.

This same financial sector is now saying "you've borrowed too much money - if you don't reduce it, we'll downgrade your credit rating"

[Ankou]

i thought most of our lending came from financers in the middle east.

[Ankou]

well i weren't far wrong.....

http://www.debtbombshell.com/bond-market.htm

[jno]

I like the way that site is dressing itself up to look like The Economist, Ankou; check the white-on-red logo and typeface

http://www.debtbombsh...-of-national-debt.htm

http://www.economist.com/

[Ankou]

jno, i'm sure its just ... coincidence...

:o]

[jake-the-peg]

As I said "investment houses and banks and pension firms. "

And 65% British

Effectively You and I are lending the Government much of this money in things like our pension contributions

It's very circular

[Ankou]

indeed. these uk institutions also own around £200bn of the us government debt.