Originally Posted by
Organ Morgan.
Back to debt. With every country in the world indebted I've asked twice in this thread who's owed these vast sums and no-one has had a stab at answering it.
Britain's national debt, which is approaching eighteen hundred billion quid, isn't what it seems because around one-third of that is owed to itself.
Wait? What? Then it's not owed then, is it? No, it isn't. Well, why is it included then? Good question, one which you might wish to ask the government for an answer. That third is the approximate six hundred billion quid created by a few mouse clicks since 2008 via QE (quantitative easing). Quantitative easing is essentially a term for money which hasn't been borrowed; it's just created from nothing. Down the years somebody at the UK Treasury rang the Bank of England to rustle-up all those billions, which the BoE did to lend to the UK with interest attached. But, but, but, hold on, the UK government owns the Bank of England, why pay it interest? Another great question which is for the government to answer. It does pay the BoE interest, but the BoE returns that interest to the government.
Now I'm really confused. Why go through the convoluted process of having one branch of government, the BoE, create that funny money at interest when the interest doesn't apply? Why doesn't some bloke sat at a Treasury computer terminal magic the dough rather than have all this palava of going through the BoE? And while I'm at it, rather than pay the thirty six billion quid in interest payments during 2018 to those who lent the UK the other twelve hundred billion quid it owes as national debt, why instead doesn't the same bloke at the Treasury return to his computer to create that amount to then use it to pay off all of the national debt? That way Blighty will become debt free and won't have to pay anyone so much as a penny in interest.
We're getting closer to solving how it is every country is in debt that amounts to a combined one hundred and eighty four trillion dollars globally according to the IMF.