Lazy Lob
09-19-2009, 05:00 AM
Brown and his social engineering will be the end of us.
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2944/intothered.jpg
The Times
Britain is clocking up debt at a rate of £6,017 per second as the Government struggles to balance the books. With tax receipts plummeting because of the recession, state borrowing grew by £16.1 billion last month — almost twice the entire budget for the 2012 Olympics.
Net borrowing for the first five months of the financial year stood at £65.3 billion, compared with £26.1 billion at the same stage last year. Total borrowing soared past the £800 billion mark for the first time and total state debt as a proportion of national output reached 57.5 per cent.
Just to pay the interest on its ballooning debts the Government must find more than £30 billion a year — about £500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that tax receipts in August dived by 9 per cent compared with August 2008, while public spending rose by almost 3 per cent. The widening gulf was bridged by borrowing. Spending on benefits grew by £900 million to £13.5 billion as unemployment soared.
Taking fright at the figures, foreign exchange dealers sent sterling diving to a four-month low against the euro. The value of the pound fell by more than 1 per cent against the dollar.
Analysts said that the Budget forecast by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, that additional borrowings would be £175 billion this year was not pessimistic enough and predicted that borrowing would be between £15 billion and £50 billion above that forecast.
John Hawksworth, chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “It seems likely that budget deficits will overshoot Treasury forecasts not only in 2009-10 but for years to come.”
Philip Hammond, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “We used to worry about borrowing £16 billion in an entire year. Now Labour have done it in just one month. These shocking figures show the depth of Gordon Brown’s debt crisis and just how irresponsible he was to pretend that spending cuts weren’t necessary.”
Mr Brown has been accused of misleading the Commons by berating the Conservatives for preparing public spending cuts when leaked Treasury documents show that he was examining his own cuts. This week he acknowledged for the first time that cuts in public spending would be necessary and yesterday he began holding a series of meetings with Cabinet ministers to discuss cuts.
Around the world, governments have kept spending to prevent a global depression, sending state borrowing soaring to $35 trillion, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The G20 leaders will discuss when to reverse stimulus policies of high public spending and ultra-low interest rates when they meet in Pittsburgh next week.
Measured as a proportion of national income, total UK government borrowing is not out of line with other rich nations, but it is growing much faster. The ONS figures exclude many public sector liabilities, including unfunded pension promises and some costs of the banking bailouts.
Gemma Tetlow, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that the Treasury’s coffers would be boosted by the rises in fuel duty and stamp duty and the reinstatement of 17.5 per cent VAT.
A Treasury spokesman said that the figures were in line with government forecasts. “They reflect the impact of the global financial crisis on tax receipts as well as the action we are taking to support the economy and invest to benefit from the recovery.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6840749.ece
September 19, 2009
Fainting by numbers
New figures on government debt show the landscape is rockier than we imagined
Just when you were starting to worry that Britain’s finances were beginning to look precarious, along come a fresh batch of Treasury statistics to show you that, in actual fact, government finances are already well beyond disastrous.
Treasury documents leaked to the Conservatives this week dramatically redefined the economic landscape and the political possibilities for whoever is running Britain next year. The documents suggest that Britain is in as perilous a financial state as any since the Labour Government went cap in hand to the IMF 30 years ago.
At their starkest, the sums provoke the sort of scream of terror that even Edvard Munch would have struggled fully to capture.
? The most succinct statistic is also the scariest: by the 2013-14 financial year, government spending on welfare and on servicing the national debt will total £257.1 billion. How much does that amount to exactly? Just over £1 in every £3 that will be spent by the Government.
? National debt, according to latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, stands at £804.8 billion; or just over £25,000 for each family in the country. The sum grew by £16.1 billion last month alone, which means that the Government is sinking deeper into debt at a rate of £6,017 a second; or £520 million a day.
? The Treasury expects debt interest payments to balloon by 11.1 per cent a year. It expects social security costs to rise by 1.4 per cent a year.
? So every day the Government has to find £83.6 million to pay interest on what it already owes. That’s £1.37 a day for everyone in the country.
? The figures show that interest payments on the national debt are expected to swell from the current financial year’s total of £27.2 billion to £63.7 billion in 2013-14. To put this in some kind of context, this is more than Britain will spend on defence and transport combined this year.
? As for spending on social security, that is due to rise from £165.6 billion this year to an alarming £193.4 billion in 2013-14 — and by a total of £63.6 billion during the period.
? The Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts that debt — which has hovered around 40 per cent of national income — will rise to around 80 per cent of national income by 2013-14 and the ratio will not return to its current levels until around 2032.
? The IMF forecasts that between 2007 and 2014 only Iceland and Ireland, among the world’s 21 leading industrial nations, will notch up a bigger increase in national debt as a percentage of national income than will Britain. In 2007, Britain’s national debt was the thirteenth-largest; in 2014 it is predicted to be the seventh-largest.
? According to the OECD, the UK this year has the largest budget deficit as a proportion of GDP among member nations. It will again next year.
? If the Conservatives come to power at the next election, and George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, lives by his pledge to protect health and overseas aid during the next spending review, that suggests that there will have to be real cuts of 14 per cent in other departments after three years, rather than the 10-11 per cent that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has been estimating.
? Vince Cable, of the Liberal Democrats, thinks that instead of the public finances needing to be tightened by £90 billion over eight years, they’ll need to be tightened by £112 billion over just five.
Worried? You should be.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6840600.ece
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2944/intothered.jpg
The Times
Britain is clocking up debt at a rate of £6,017 per second as the Government struggles to balance the books. With tax receipts plummeting because of the recession, state borrowing grew by £16.1 billion last month — almost twice the entire budget for the 2012 Olympics.
Net borrowing for the first five months of the financial year stood at £65.3 billion, compared with £26.1 billion at the same stage last year. Total borrowing soared past the £800 billion mark for the first time and total state debt as a proportion of national output reached 57.5 per cent.
Just to pay the interest on its ballooning debts the Government must find more than £30 billion a year — about £500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that tax receipts in August dived by 9 per cent compared with August 2008, while public spending rose by almost 3 per cent. The widening gulf was bridged by borrowing. Spending on benefits grew by £900 million to £13.5 billion as unemployment soared.
Taking fright at the figures, foreign exchange dealers sent sterling diving to a four-month low against the euro. The value of the pound fell by more than 1 per cent against the dollar.
Analysts said that the Budget forecast by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, that additional borrowings would be £175 billion this year was not pessimistic enough and predicted that borrowing would be between £15 billion and £50 billion above that forecast.
John Hawksworth, chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “It seems likely that budget deficits will overshoot Treasury forecasts not only in 2009-10 but for years to come.”
Philip Hammond, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “We used to worry about borrowing £16 billion in an entire year. Now Labour have done it in just one month. These shocking figures show the depth of Gordon Brown’s debt crisis and just how irresponsible he was to pretend that spending cuts weren’t necessary.”
Mr Brown has been accused of misleading the Commons by berating the Conservatives for preparing public spending cuts when leaked Treasury documents show that he was examining his own cuts. This week he acknowledged for the first time that cuts in public spending would be necessary and yesterday he began holding a series of meetings with Cabinet ministers to discuss cuts.
Around the world, governments have kept spending to prevent a global depression, sending state borrowing soaring to $35 trillion, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The G20 leaders will discuss when to reverse stimulus policies of high public spending and ultra-low interest rates when they meet in Pittsburgh next week.
Measured as a proportion of national income, total UK government borrowing is not out of line with other rich nations, but it is growing much faster. The ONS figures exclude many public sector liabilities, including unfunded pension promises and some costs of the banking bailouts.
Gemma Tetlow, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that the Treasury’s coffers would be boosted by the rises in fuel duty and stamp duty and the reinstatement of 17.5 per cent VAT.
A Treasury spokesman said that the figures were in line with government forecasts. “They reflect the impact of the global financial crisis on tax receipts as well as the action we are taking to support the economy and invest to benefit from the recovery.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6840749.ece
September 19, 2009
Fainting by numbers
New figures on government debt show the landscape is rockier than we imagined
Just when you were starting to worry that Britain’s finances were beginning to look precarious, along come a fresh batch of Treasury statistics to show you that, in actual fact, government finances are already well beyond disastrous.
Treasury documents leaked to the Conservatives this week dramatically redefined the economic landscape and the political possibilities for whoever is running Britain next year. The documents suggest that Britain is in as perilous a financial state as any since the Labour Government went cap in hand to the IMF 30 years ago.
At their starkest, the sums provoke the sort of scream of terror that even Edvard Munch would have struggled fully to capture.
? The most succinct statistic is also the scariest: by the 2013-14 financial year, government spending on welfare and on servicing the national debt will total £257.1 billion. How much does that amount to exactly? Just over £1 in every £3 that will be spent by the Government.
? National debt, according to latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, stands at £804.8 billion; or just over £25,000 for each family in the country. The sum grew by £16.1 billion last month alone, which means that the Government is sinking deeper into debt at a rate of £6,017 a second; or £520 million a day.
? The Treasury expects debt interest payments to balloon by 11.1 per cent a year. It expects social security costs to rise by 1.4 per cent a year.
? So every day the Government has to find £83.6 million to pay interest on what it already owes. That’s £1.37 a day for everyone in the country.
? The figures show that interest payments on the national debt are expected to swell from the current financial year’s total of £27.2 billion to £63.7 billion in 2013-14. To put this in some kind of context, this is more than Britain will spend on defence and transport combined this year.
? As for spending on social security, that is due to rise from £165.6 billion this year to an alarming £193.4 billion in 2013-14 — and by a total of £63.6 billion during the period.
? The Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts that debt — which has hovered around 40 per cent of national income — will rise to around 80 per cent of national income by 2013-14 and the ratio will not return to its current levels until around 2032.
? The IMF forecasts that between 2007 and 2014 only Iceland and Ireland, among the world’s 21 leading industrial nations, will notch up a bigger increase in national debt as a percentage of national income than will Britain. In 2007, Britain’s national debt was the thirteenth-largest; in 2014 it is predicted to be the seventh-largest.
? According to the OECD, the UK this year has the largest budget deficit as a proportion of GDP among member nations. It will again next year.
? If the Conservatives come to power at the next election, and George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, lives by his pledge to protect health and overseas aid during the next spending review, that suggests that there will have to be real cuts of 14 per cent in other departments after three years, rather than the 10-11 per cent that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has been estimating.
? Vince Cable, of the Liberal Democrats, thinks that instead of the public finances needing to be tightened by £90 billion over eight years, they’ll need to be tightened by £112 billion over just five.
Worried? You should be.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6840600.ece