These are known-knowns as put out for us:
- UK to borrow a peacetime record of £355bn this year.
- The figure almost exceeds the size of the UK economy, with debt having reached 97.9% of the UK's gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is the sum (measured in pounds) of the value of goods and services produced in the economy.
UK government borrows mainly from:
- UK pension funds/insurance companies (29%)
- Private corporations / other financial institutions
- UK building societies. (e.g. building societies buy government gilts to invest their savings to get a decent return.)
- UK Banks
- UK Private investors
- Foreign investors (foreign banks and foreign investment firms (2018 approx 20%)
- Bank of England Asset Purchase facility (Quantitative easing)
- HMRC is the largest creditor for businesses in the UK.
All right, that bit is not hard to find. What is near impossible to find is whom the external debt is to. What I mean in particular who the major players are whom taxpayers are indebted to.
Is it the IMF, Soros, World Bank, to whom? And within the country, apart from HMRC and the banks, who are the major creditors?
Actually JohnM de France (Google has found an old family website and has used the moniker that I used there)
ReplyDeleteHere in France, people with English sounding name are regularly telephoned my Indian scammers claiming to represent Microsoft, Google or Orange. It has happened to me four times in the last five or six years. She (it is usually a she who makes the initial contact) gives herself away by the Indian accent, also her telephone number has an Indian international dialing code which shows on my telephone.
"The figure almost exceeds the size of the UK economy"
ReplyDeleteIgnorant twaddle. GDP refers to a (notional) flow of money, debt to a lump of money. Plain different things.
"What is near impossible to find is whom the external debt is to." That will depend on who bought or sold gilts today.