Globally, many developed nations have buckled under the mountain of national debt that governments have piled up throughout the decades in order to expand the reach of the state, be it for warfare or for welfare.

A number of nations in Europe have been bailed out by the ECB after their debts became too great to service. Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland are still suffering from the repercussions, but Britain may not have escaped the worst of this crisis.

The current government have added more debt to the nations credit bill than any other single parliament in UK history, despite grand claims that it would actually reign in the ballooning budget deficit.

Again, statistics help with the mis-information being pedalled by various media outlets (see my previous post on this issue). Depending on how you measure national debt, and there are of course many interpretations, this nation has a debt to GDP ratio of anywhere between approximately 80% to 900%!

The later number includes not just current government borrowing, but other factors which need to be taken into consideration when trying to understand total indebtedness such as unfunded future liabilities (ie. pensions to be paid to future populations), household debt, company debt, bank debts and the recent bank bailouts

..all of which means, how long is this sustainable? This is the multi-trillion dollar question. Some would reasonably believe that it is more a question of WHEN and not IF.

A popular UK publication, MoneyWeek, recently published an article on this topic which they feel needs to be taken extremely seriously. Read it here or even watch it here;

The End of Britain by dm_4ffe277495b5a

In order to bring some sense of balance to this debate, it is worth noting the comments of a sceptic. Note however, that the fact that this nation has much more debt than it should, or that expenditure/the deficit is not being managed well is not up for question.

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