In 2010, Liam Byrne left a note to his successor as Chief Secretary to the Treasury which famously read “I’m afraid there is no money”. After all, annual borrowing had just peaked at a record £158 billion, and the stock of debt was about to top £1,000 billion for the first time. Roll forward a little over a … Continue reading Is there any money left?
Tag: bank of england
Sense checking the Chancellor’s £25bn
Rishi Sunak is warning that a one percentage point increase in the interest rates paid on government debt could add £25bn to the annual debt interest bill. Does this stack up? And how worried should we be? For a start, the £25bn figure is factually correct. There has been some confusion about this on Twitter, … Continue reading Sense checking the Chancellor’s £25bn
A quickie on the UK debt-to-GDP ratio…
Remember all the fuss last year when it was reported that the UK’s public debt-to-GDP ratio had hit 100%? This happened in the May data and again in July, but in both cases the figures were later revised down. In January 2021, net debt was still ‘only’ 97.9% of GDP. This is mainly because the … Continue reading A quickie on the UK debt-to-GDP ratio…
What’s the point of ‘British Recovery Bonds’?
The centrepiece of Keir Starmer’s big policy speech on Thursday was a proposal for a new ‘British Recovery Bond’. It’s a nice idea on paper and many other people, from both left and right, have backed similar schemes. But it’s still hard to see what it would actually achieve in practice. To recap, the plan … Continue reading What’s the point of ‘British Recovery Bonds’?
Plain-speaking Economics 