Sovereign debt crisis at 'boiling point'

[TimberWolf]

How would increasing the share of women in the work force help when there is a finite supply of jobs and it's not enough to keep the men in work? It'll be even less if they take the axe to the public sector as planned.

I guess a lot of the women are housewives and so kept on their husbands' incomes rather than claiming benefits. If they started working unemployment claims would rise.

It's all about euphemisms init. Instead of saying we worse off, they say house prices have gone up, more women working instead of that families needing both partners to be working, GDP/productivity up instead of saying wages are down.

[Scary]

How would increasing the share of women in the work force help when there is a finite supply of jobs and it's not enough to keep the men in work? It'll be even less if they take the axe to the public sector as planned.

I guess a lot of the women are housewives and so kept on their husbands' incomes rather than claiming benefits. If they started working unemployment claims would rise.

[Sysman]

Been a while since we had some doom and gloom, but it hasn't gone away ..

Sovereign debt crisis at 'boiling point', warns Bank for International Settlements

Britain -- unlike Greece -- can no longer rely on soft measures to cut the structural deficit, such as increasing the share of women in the work force. Such low-hanging fruit has mostly been picked already.

So there you go ladies. Without the boom and bust cycles of yesteryear, you could be leading a life of leisure.





(only if you wanted to of course)

[OwlHoot]

Britain is not in quite the precarious position that Greece is at the moment.

But, Greece is making much greater efforts towards dealing with its debt crisis than Britain is and is still about to get caned. It is interesting to watch what happens over there and to think that could be Britain after the election.

WHS

If Labour gets an outright majority, and Ed Balls is appointed chancellor of the exchequer (see my .sig), the balloon will go up big time within days if not hours.

[Lockhouse]

Britain is not in quite the precarious position that Greece is at the moment.

But, Greece is making much greater efforts towards dealing with its debt crisis than Britain is and is still about to get caned. It is interesting to watch what happens over there and to realise that will be Britain after the election.

FTFY

[Gonzo]

Greece is heating up nicely right now.

Britain is not in quite the precarious position that Greece is at the moment.

But, Greece is making much greater efforts towards dealing with its debt crisis than Britain is and is still about to get caned. It is interesting to watch what happens over there and to think that could be Britain after the election.

[Scary]

Greece is heating up nicely right now.

[Doggy Styles]

Tucked away in the BIS report are charts and tables showing that Britain faces the highest structural deficit in the OECD club of rich states, with a mounting risk that public debt will explode out of control.

Anyone with half a brain knows that. Even George Osborne knows it!

As one of those dozens of 'deceived' business leaders said today: "Gordon Brown is economically illiterate."

[expat]

An old fashioned recession would have been preferable to this Gordontuous debt.

The "age of austerity" does have a poetic ring to it though.

Iain M Banks in his science fiction describes an era as post-Age of Scarcity. Unfortunately the "post-" bit is in the far future.

[TimberWolf]

An old fashioned recession would have been preferable to this Gordontuous debt.

The "age of austerity" does have a poetic ring to it though.

[OwlHoot]

Been a while since we had some doom and gloom, but it hasn't gone away ..

Sovereign debt crisis at 'boiling point', warns Bank for International Settlements

"The aftermath of the financial crisis is poised to bring a simmering fiscal problem in industrial economies to the boiling point", said the Swiss-based bank for central bankers -- the oldest and most venerable of the world's financial watchdogs. Drastic austerity measures will be needed to head off a compound interest spiral, if it is not already too late for some.

:::

Britain emerges in the BIS paper as an arch-sinner. The country may have entered the crisis with a low public debt but this shock absorber has already been used up, exposing the underlying rot in the UK's public accounts.

Tucked away in the BIS report are charts and tables showing that Britain faces the highest structural deficit in the OECD club of rich states, with a mounting risk that public debt will explode out of control.

Interest payments on the UK's public debt will double from 5pc of GDP to 10pc within a decade under the bank's 'baseline scenario' before spiralling upwards to 27pc by 2040, the highest in the industrial world. Greece fares better, and Italy looks saintly by comparison.

The BIS said the UK's structural budget deficit will be 9pc of GDP next year, the highest in the advanced world. A primary surplus of 3.5pc of GDP will be required for the next twenty years just to stabilize the debt at the pre-crisis level.

The paper said that Labour's plan to consolidate the budget deficit by 1.3pc of GDP annually for the next three years is not nearly enough. Such a gentle squeeze will let public debt climb to 160pc of GDP by the end of the decade, accelerating to 350pc over the following twenty years as the compound interest trap closes in. "Consolidations along the lines currently being discussed will not be sufficient to ensure that debt levels remain within reasonable bounds", said the bank. While the comment covers a group of countries, it is clearly aimed at Britain.

The analysis bolsters claims by the Tories that markets will not wait patiently as Britain draws up leisurely plans for austerity-lite, relying on implausible turbo-growth to do the hard work of cutting the deficit.