Knowing and Making

I'm on Radio Five Live at 5.45 today talking about the public sector borrowing requirement, whether it's a necessary response to the recession, and how the country is going to pay it back. Update later when I listen back to what I end up saying...

The Economist has a Global Public Debt Clock on their site now, along similar lines to the American and Irish debt clocks but monitoring the total public debt of the whole world. But lots of people are concerned by the buildup of private, consumer and corporate, debt as well as debt incurred by governments. So, inspired by previous conversations with Nick Rowe , I decided to extend it to show the net total of ALL debt in the world - public and private. The clock will automatically update to the correct figures in real time. Here it is - enjoy:

Robert Peston, famous among his blog commenters as the BBC's banking editor (with a sideline in other businesses) has come up with his most creative definition yet of a "business" - the UK government . He points out, in a surprisingly sanguine article, that UK government debt has been put on negative watch by Standard and Poor's. As he says, it's not that big a deal - I suppose the surprise is that it didn't happen earlier. As the UK is likely to be one of the world's top ten debtors in the next few years, with about £1 trillion of public debt (still less than Citigroup or RBS, incidentally, and much lower than the Japanese, US or Italian governments), it is only natural that people would keep an eye on the figures. S&P have said that the downgrade might happen if the next government does not come up with a credible plan to put the debt on a long-term downward trend. Seems fair - and everyone expects the next Chancellor, whoever it might be, to do exac...