| SamuelRSmith said: Erm, Kasz, I don't know how the country could go bankrupt - yes, we have a lot of external debt: but that debt all has contracts, and as such, we cannot be forced to pay it before the end of the contract. It's like getting a mortgage, you have to pay it back over a certain number of years - the bank can't just demand that you pay back the mortgage now. When it comes to debt, it's not the people with the debt that are taking any risks, it's the people lending the money out. All the UK needs to be able to do is pay the interest on the debt, if it can do that, the people lending the money will be fine with it, and actors will still be willing to lend more. When it comes to these things, it doesn't matter how much debt you previously had, it depends on whether you can afford the interest on the new debt. In the long run, yes, it will have a negative effect on our standard of living (relatively, that is, we can still improve our standard of living, but not as the same rate as the people who lent us the money in the first place), but in the short run, which is what this recession is all about, having the debt is beneficiary. btw, the UK's economy is the best in the EU, atm, and many economists are in agreement about this, now. |
If so it's a lot different considering the bankruptcy fears that were worried about up till like... last month.
It's easy for the UK to go bankrupt though... not all of your debt does have contracts... since a LOT of it is individual external debt. Not all governmental debt.
External debt in relation to people is a big problem as well.
As for economists.... if anything it's been shown they are less reliable then weathermen. The sad truth is... nobody really knows for sure how the economy works and even our best theoreies have a LOT of flaws.
One needs only to look at the "Shotgun" blast our stimulus bills in the US was.
The reason our Stimulus plan cost trillions more then it should was because Obama looked at the econony and said
"Fuck, economists didn't see this coming, and nobody is completely positive what will pull us out of this, so we're going to spend a lot in a bunch of different places so we don't have our chickens in one basket. We're spending multiple times more then we should but this is a gamble I believe we can't lose."
Of course he can't outright say that because all the news would report is "Obama admits he doesn't know how the economy works."
