PDQ Mobile wrote:I sort of thought I had seen that somewhere but was too uncertain to pass comment.
It does sort of beg the question though that where do we as a nation get the cash we are about to borrow? And who do we owe the cash to that we borrowed already?
(to whom!)
It was sort of touched on in an earlier thread "Debt" but I never felt very sure about any of the answers.
It remains ( to me anyway) a great mystery.
My understanding of it is that if it's actual borrowing it's in the form of bonds/glits etc that are sold to the market in general. They are generally picked up by low yield 'safe' funds and the kind of customers who go for those (pension funds etc). The bonds are sold with a coupon rate which is basically an interest rate and vary in length from a few to many (30??) years. The rate is fixed as far as the government is concerned for the full length of the bond but the value of resales on the market can vary. When issuing new bonds the government has to sell them at a coupon rate that actually gets them sold, hence if a country's debt becomes less attractive relative to the world, interest rate of new debt will rise.
QE meanwhile is where the BoE essentially 'prints' money to then buy existing government debt from the market.
The BoE has a rather good bulletin on money here:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publicat ... b14q1.aspxThe_Master wrote:The are plenty of English who don't want to work, but there are plenty that do and can't find work.
Almost every coffee shop or the like is staffed by east Europeans. Literally everywhere!
Even at the depths of the post 2008 crash recession there was no point where firstbus in bristol was not advertising for full time bus drivers ('all training provided'). There are thousands of vacancies around currently, some might involve having to move a bit but that's always been the way, jobs are often constrained to where they need to be.
tyreon wrote:Will it be 75 before you can retire soon? Work till you drop! Bit hard for the plumbers and fitters of the land,but for those who sit on the red and green benches a nice jolly
So back to how it used to be when pensions first came in. I'm not suggesting that this is a good thing but there does seem to be this odd impression that working till you drop is something new. The amount of time people are spending as dependants of the economy has grown rapid over the last few decades - at both ends. As automation increases (there may be no need for bus/taxi/HGV drivers in a couple of decades) in this is going to need a serious rethink of how the economy works (flat rate citizens income perhaps).
Which is another point there, automation is going to make 'immigrants are stealing our jobs' look like a minor issue.