Posted by smeddum on November 28, 2008
November 22, 2008
Britain is in no position to laugh at Iceland’s problems
Patrick Hosking Business commentary
Is Britain simply a bigger version of Iceland? Certainly the City of London is starting to look a bit too much like Reykjavik, but with taller buildings and fewer cod. It is an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration, to liken the UK to the broken, bankrupt North Atlantic island. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, failing banks | 2 Comments »
Posted by seumasach on November 17, 2008
Professor Willem Buiter’s blog is an indispensable guide to the unfolding of the Great British economic catastrophe.
Willem Buiter
17th november, 2008
In an earlier post to this blog, I raised the possibility that the UK might face a triple financial crisis: a combined banking crisis, sovereign debt crisis and sterling crisis. Let me be clearer than I was before about what I mean by a financial crisis. A financial crisis is a situation where quantity rationing of would-be borrowers and would-be sellers of securities suddenly replaces normal market clearing through variations in interest rates or market prices of securities.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 16, 2008
November 13th, 2008
With the pound sterling dropping like a stone against most other currencies and credit default swap rates on long-term UK sovereign debt beginning to edge up, this is a good time to revisit a suggestion I made earlier on a number of occasions (e.g. here, here and here), that there is a non-trivial risk of the UK becoming the next Iceland.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, join the euro! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 21, 2008
Brooks Newmark
21st October, 2008
The British government often congratulates itself on its efforts to keep public finances on a stable and sustainable level. Yesterday Gordon Brown even claimed: “Debt is considerably lower than a decade ago”. However, Britain’s public debt is actually £1,866 billion, equivalent to 125.5% of GDP, nearly three times larger than the government’s published figure of £645 billion and 43.4% of GDP. This measures out as a debt of £76,475 per British household.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 