UK Government Debt - Putting it in perspective

joe_blotts

Haver analytics?

chewmylegoff

joe_blotts wrote: »

Haver analytics?

thank you sherlock. do you have a link to a page containing the graph on their site which explains how it is calculated?

joe_blotts

chewmylegoff wrote: »

thank you sherlock. do you have a link to a page containing the graph on their site which explains how it is calculated?

Lol

I'll take your stance:

....but i can't find the numbers behind the graph you are using and i don't care enough to look.

chewmylegoff

joe_blotts wrote: »

Lol

I'll take your stance:

....but i can't find the numbers behind the graph you are using and i don't care enough to look.

you posted it - why did you post it if you don't care about it? why don't you just say where did you get it from?

concealment is the strongest indicator of dishonesty, don't you know?

joe_blotts

chewmylegoff wrote: »

you posted it - why did you post it if you don't care about it? why don't you just say where did you get it from?

concealment is the strongest indicator of dishonesty, don't you know?

I got it from this thread from yesterday

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4046981

Link on first post

CLAPTON

I can't get it to cut and paste but some interesting figures from wikipedia that perports to show net international investment position i.e. the difference between its external debt and its assetts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_position


it shows e.g. that switzerland has a positive NIIP of 135% of GDP
whilst UK has a negative NIIP of 13% of GDP
rather different from simple figures of debt alone

CLAPTON

and again for net debt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

which shows switzerland as having a net debt of 229% of gdp
and the UK as having net debt of 330% of gdp


and interestingly Luxembourg as having net debt of a masive 3,443% of gdp (presumably the newspapers there are full of impending doom)

StevieJ

joe_blotts wrote: »

I'm sure the basis of calculation s the same for each country, and as this is a graph of perspective what you see is the perspective, that our debt is the highest in the g10 by a wide margin regardless of the hair splitting your attempting

But this is backed up by overseas assets , this is a little out of date does add some perspective, I guess these figures will have deteriorated since 2008 but it does show that as a country with a large financial sector we will have larger liabilities than most but also a larger asset base.

These figures reveal how open the UK economy has become. Among the world’s major economies, only the US has a bigger stock of foreign assets.
The values of UK assets and liabilities have both increased by a factor of more than three in the decade since 1998, with total assets standing at £7,135.1 billion and total liabilities at £7,042.1 in 2008. These are huge values when set against GDP in 2008 of £1,446 billion.

http://www.hsbcukeconomyexplained.co.uk/Pages/Contents/17_UK_External_Position/17-7_Importance_of_Global_Investment.aspx

chewmylegoff

joe_blotts wrote: »

I got it from this thread from yesterday

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4046981

Link on first post

right, so on that page there are three graphs, two of which show the UK financial sector's gross liabilities to be approximately 250% of GDP and one which shows them to be 600% of GDP.

what do you think the difference between the two figures could possibly be?

one possible explanation is that the 600% includes the liabilties of overseas banks operating in london.

another possibility is that the other two graphs are just wrong and the correct figure is 600% (since the other two graphs are drawn from the same source this is perfectly possible), but it seems more likely to me that the 600% includes an entire class of something which is not included in the 250% (especially because the swiss banking sector's liabilities do not appear to show up in the haver chart).

interestingly this from 2011 has UK with finanical sector liabilities of 219% of GDP and the source includes haver.
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/01/chart-of-the-week-deleveraging/

joe_blotts

Net Debt? I see, so that graph I posted isn't the total debt minus assets? it's just the gross debt? (penny just dropped-didn't know we had any assets) why didn't it say that then? Perhaps I've been misled and apologies all round.

So net debt is around 300% of GDP, still quite high.