Introducing the Coffee House national debt counter

HalcyonDays

Before you all at the Spectator lose all sense of proportion in hyperventilating over the debt figures, you should read the 3-page review in this week's Economist, which sets out various reasons why the UK's economic and financial situation, while certainly bad, isn't as apocalyptcally bad as often maintained in these blogs.

Also, the US national debt is north of 7 trillion pounds - or more than 10 times the UK's for an economy 5 times the UK's size. The US figure here also doesn't include future liabilities from social security and Medicare entitlement programmes.

Bexleyite

Is it possible you could do it as widget for websites and blogs?

James Burdett

I don't know if your clock is working properly. I went away, came back and the debt was lower than before I went away. Odd.

oldrightie

John redwood kindly responded to my take on the G7 meeting in Washington, so notably absent from the MSM. Unlike that rubbish G20. Have a peek. He and I are very scared that we are so very broke. I believe that China, India, Brazil and belatedly the USA are on the way out of this mess. Labours' fiscal stupidity will leave us mired in the quicksand of interest repayments. Negative Equity is the new name for The UK.

simon hb

As I understand it, we haven't actually finished paying for the Second, First or the Boer wars yet. Are we supposed to panic, or shall we try to be a bit more grown up about this?

alex

Can you sub divide it so we have a uk and a brown's debt counter? Need to visably demonstrate that debt unber brown doubled.

Fred

Just what we need to cheer us up.

Anton

Just being slightly pedantic (sorry!), but it should be £613.1bn at most in the second para, 4th line down as it has not yet reached £613.3

candre

This must be wrong.We must be wealthy. How else would we be continuing to give £40 million each year in aid to China. Yes, to China, which could afford £20 billion on the Olymics and spends much more on its space programme. which spent

KB

Any chance you could do a variation offering "off book" debt such as PFI and public pension obligations?

David

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Paul B

Well done Peter and to those involved. Simple and effective

wrinkled weasel

Could you give us the embed code so we can put it on our blogs, please? (with a clickthro to the Speccie, naturally.

Pedro

Do you intend readers to burst out laughing or slit their wrists? Can you be sued for a rise in the national suicide rate? You never know these days with the mountain of human rights law and lawyers.

Pete Hoskin

wrinkled weasel: I've now added the code to this page:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3564956/the-coffee-house-debt-counter-information-and-sources.thtml

Please embed away!

Pete Hoskin

James Burdett & Anton: there were a couple of technical hitches to start off with. But all fixed now.

PT

Family share? Does it not matter than the burden also falls on single or childless households?

JohnAnt

"Future taxpayers will be left"
There'll be one fewer left. I'm off.

Herbert Thornton

I haven't calculated the precise rate at which each family's share of the debt burden is increasing, but it rose twice while I was sitting at my computer so the rise appears to be several pounds every day - i.e. some thousands of pounds per family every year.

This makes me ask - how many of the (very roughly) 20 million families actually produce as much value as they consume? Indeed, how many of them produce nothing at all, but only consume?

Mr Hoskin's advice to people to brace themselves for worse seems to put it rather mildly.

RayD

Makes you yearn for the good old days when we paid for our bloated welfare state with our own money. Sigh.

Rush-is-Right

Are the debts re PFI guarantees and the unfunded pension liabilities included in these figures?

oldtimer

You are to be congratulated on providing this debt counter. HalcyonDays opens the comments by warning us against hyperventilating. Perhaps he should have paid attention to the wise remarks of the Member for Birkenhead North on Sky news yesterday c 6pm. He said that the government was taking a huge risk with the country, the economy and the currency by failing to tackle the debt problem right now and deferring remedial action until after the general election. He pointed out, correctly in my view, that it will only take a gilt buyers strike and/or going cap in hand to the IMF and the government will lose all control of the economy.

I agree with Frank Field that the Brown/Darling axis is running an enormous and irresponsible risk by playing politics at this time. They are unfit for the great offices of State that they hold.

Ray

Do what the Americans once did and place it on a big display screen mounted somewhere prominent like Trafalgar Square.

Swiss Bob

I don't know where to put it on here http://the-daily-politics.blogspot.com/.

You've made it a stupid size haven't you? Who has a blog wih a sidebar 300 pixels wide. (I tried changing the pixel size, it just cut the edges off, or am I missing something?)

Simon Brock

In the USA they did have a national debt clock on Times Square but it ran out of digits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7660409.stm

Hayward Maberley

simon hb,
On 31 December 2006, the UK made a payment of about $83m (£45.5m) to the US to discharge the last of its loans from World War II
As for earlier wars how about those even before the Napoleonic wars. The UK government is still paying out on these "consols", because it is better value for taxpayers to keep paying the 2.5% interest than to buy them back!
As for

Prodicus

Neat but it doesn't fit most blog side bars. Could it be amended?

Max width 220 px.
Could it lose the words 'Coffee House' from the top as they are repeated at the bottom?

Could it lose the flag?

Could lose the family image graphic -- it duplicates the word 'family.

Speaking of upgrades, could your webnerds provide a preview function for comments, please?

Thank you.

Stephen Green

Does this include PFI and other fraudulent off balance sheet debt created by Macavity?

Hayward Maberley

Mr Herberrt Thornton.
There is a Huw Thornton who posted, at some time, to blogs on The Spectator, any relation? May I also enquire whether you are related to the Henry Thornton, banker, economist, parliamentarian and philanthropist , who wrote An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain. He was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect as well as being Slave Trade Abolitionist?
Here is a site that may be of interest. It shows the cost of the Iraq Fiasco and the Afghanistan Imbroglio to the taxpayers of the USA
http://www.costofwar.com/
Maybe The Spectator can do a similar one for the taxpayers of the UK?

Hayward Maberley

Ray,
The debt clock is currently installed on Sixth Avenue, Avenue of the Americas, in Manhattan, New York City. There are plans for replacement/update by adding two more digits to the clock's display in 2009. The extra digits are due to the growth in the debt caused by the Wall Street Tsunami.

Hayward Maberley

HalcyonDays,
From Reaganomics to Bushedenomics, brought to you by the Fiscally Responsible Republicans?
In 1981, shortly after taking office, Reagan complained of "runaway deficits" that were then approaching US$80 billion, or about 2.5
percent of GDP
Within only two years, however, Reaganomics had succeeded in enlarging the deficit to more than US$200 billion, or 6 percent of GDP. At the end of Bush 1 it was down to US$150 billion, still almost double what it had been under Carter. However the National Debt had climbed from US$995 billion, when Reagan took office, to $4 trillion by the end of Bush1's presidency. Reaganomics, as applied by 3 Republican Administrations, had it grow as a % of GDP from 26% to 42%. Clinton managed hold/wind back both of them in returning the budget to a surplus of some US$280 billion and reducing the National Debt to 35% of GDP.
Bushedeconomics soon remedied that as The Faux Texan and late unlamented encumbrance in the White House, even managed to outdo "The Gipper" and his own Dad. Setting yet another unenviable record.
For the deficit forecast was $482 billion in the 2009 budget moving from black to red ink in the order of US$750 billion from the end of Clinton's term. But that was before the Wall Street Tsunami where so much money is being sloshed around, including the socialist style buying of bank shares, that the deficit could blow out to in excess of US$1.5 trillion. The National Debt will follow suite, the 2009 estimate being US$9.7 but now blown out to somewhere in excess of US$10 trillion. That will have it north of 40% of GDP yet again!
It is interesting to note that from 1978-2005 under Democratic Presidents, Federal Spending went up by 9.9%. Federal Debt by 4.2%, GDP by 12.6%.
Under Republican Presidents Federal Spending was up 12.1%, Federal Debt by 36.4% , GDP by 10.7%
So which is the big spending, big debt and drag on the economy party?
They should be called the Fiscally Risible Republicans.

Herbert Thornton

Hayward Maberley (April 26th, 2009 2:13pm) -

So far as I know, I am not related to either of the Thorntons you mention.

Thank you for the link to the other thought-provoking debt counters.

Alex

HalcyonDays said:

"Also, the US national debt is north of 7 trillion pounds - or more than 10 times the UK's for an economy 5 times the UK's size. The US figure here also doesn't include future liabilities from social security and Medicare entitlement programmes."

Neither does the UK National Debt. The UK National Debt statistics only count the amounts relating to debt securities. They ignore other contractual and contingent liabilities and guarantees. They also ignore the future cost of state pensions - not unreasonable since they *could* be aboloished at any time if the government chose.

Less reasonably they exclude the future cost of contracted pensions for public sector employees, for which there is an unavoidable conctractual liability but whose quantum is unknown, although actuarial estimates put that figure at around £1.1 trillion.

The US includes future federal employee pension liabilities by funding a pension fund which subscribes for treasuries, so the current cash cost is the same but the liability shows up in the US government books while the equivalent liability is not included in the UK statistics.

Just including the pension liabilities would put the UK at £1.8 trillion, but last November, I came up with a figure of £2.3 trillion, which in US terms would be £12 trillion. It is higher now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ax9ojC7AX4