$10 Trillion in about a years time...

Hobgoblin said:
kinda hard to fight a war with no equipment, or army. it was by no stretch of the imagination "their" war either.
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I think you and pitchfork might be talking about different conflicts here, I'm guessing but it sounds like you are talking about the loan for WWII and pitchfork appears to be talking about payment in kind with the UK fighting/peacekeeping in Iraq.

As Evangelion says it doesn't appear to make a huge difference to the US economy, not least because other economies rely on the US so require it to keep going as well.
 
yeh it would make more sense your way semi-pro, but we arnt paying the US back for current conflicts. we're using our own funds as far as i am aware (yey).

@scorza. thats good to know, but surely we will have to pay it back some point? i really dont know much about economic situations i just heard a interesting program on radio 4 a while back about the deficit when i was getting ready for work :)
 
Hobgoblin said:
@scorza. thats good to know, but surely we will have to pay it back some point? i really dont know much about economic situations i just heard a interesting program on radio 4 a while back about the deficit when i was getting ready for work :)
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Yes and with interest. The last conservative government spent a lot of money reducing the national debt in the '80s and '90s. It's a double-edged sword though, if you pay off debt then it hurts the economy too as there's no investment in public services, which decay (like the transport system) and you lose the effects of the multiplier (i.e. every pound spent by the government contributes 2 or 3 pounds to GDP).

Note that the rules of the EU are that member states aren't allowed to borrow more that 4% of GDP or something - we've never breached that limit up to now, though likely will do this year thanks to Northern Rock. Countries like France and Italy breach that limit regularly.
 
Am i right in saying that US is screwing not just their own country up, but others?
 
semi-pro waster said:
Long or short scale? Here you go, short scale is 1,000 more than the previous term, long scale is 1,000,000 more so you are either one thousand times greater or one million times greater respectively.
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Knew i could rely on my half interested in skilled procrastination fellow OCUK'er for a detailed answer.

Am not being lazy myself here (honest), you've only got to look at my spelling correction edits on my thread on Phone Rage to tell i've had one to many beers :p

Thanks SPW :cool:
 
Thorpy said:
Am i right in saying that US is screwing not just their own country up, but others?
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The global economy is so incestuous these days that any damage done to the biggest economy (the US) will have knock on effects with other economies - you only have to look at the recent FTSE 100 share price turmoil, it's almost all down to worries about the US economy.

We export more to the US than any other country, so if they go into recession and stop spending then we naturally won't export as much to them, affecting British businesses. US government borrowing actually makes it less likely for a US recession on the short term, but more likely later down the line (if they decide they should reduce their level of debt instead of spending it).
 
Paramount said:
So where does $10 trillion actually come from? Loans from other countries? Can't they just print $10 trillion worth of dollars and bingo, debts paid :D
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it is issued in the form of securities that are purchased by banks at auctions and then actively traded around the world

as mentioned previously Asian countries own a substantial chunk of them (Asians like to save tbh...)

Yes the US can just print more money but that would devalue their currency.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Long or short scale? Here you go, short scale is 1,000 more than the previous term, long scale is 1,000,000 more so you are either one thousand times greater or one million times greater respectively.
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i've always wanted to understand the "american" and "british" ways of counting, however it seems nowadays it would be better to call the systems the french and american systems! I'm with the french on this one
 
the french way makes no sense, because the french way makes a billion a million million, which is fair enough, but then it makes a trillion a million billion - surely it should be a billion billion?

and the other way's better anyway, giving every set of 000 a new name past a million, because if you don't do that, big numbers would take forever to say.


10 trillion is only $33,000 per US citizen. Pay up I say! :p
 
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scorza said:
We export more to the US than any other country, so if they go into recession and stop spending then we naturally won't export as much to them, affecting British businesses. US government borrowing actually makes it less likely for a US recession on the short term, but more likely later down the line (if they decide they should reduce their level of debt instead of spending it).
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But the trade we do with the EU as a whole outweighs that as well, by a fair amount. That's why it's good to have a close EU who we can trade with as it will make us less susceptible to American economic hiccups. The EU is also a broad union so a recession in France and Spain doesn't necessarily mean one for Germany and Poland.

But they're straightening our bananas...!
 
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