Will Gordon Brown be able to pay back the national debt?
As we covered in our previous post, the UK government is having great difficulty in raising significant debt finance from the gilt market. The recent failure of a gilts auction, the first since 1995, has highlighted the fact that many investors are shying away from UK debt investments as concerns grow about the ever-increasing debt mountain and difficult inflation figures.
Gordon Brown has been very vocal over the last few months in his assertion that all governments around the world need to work together to rescue the worldwide economy. However, as he travels the world trying to attract support for his various rescue packages it seems as though the UK government is struggling to refinance the current debt burden, never mind the expected increase in the future.
As we have covered on a number of occasions, ultimately it will be the UK taxpayer who will be left to cover the massive shortfall in government debt with taxes set to rise substantially in the medium to longer term. Whether UK national debt tops out at £1 trillion, £2 trillion or £3 trillion remains to be seen but the higher the debt rises the more concerned investment markets will become. Indeed the Bank of England was yesterday highly critical of the UK government and the ever-increasing debt being taken on.
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