UK Debt - some statistics.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Aug 2007, 22:01

Maybe it is possible to have growth forever. We invent smarter ways of using materials - getting more economic activity out of less resources (string quartets don't use much energy but the ticket price is included in GNP), and we discover new sources of energy, get fusion to work, cold fusion, zero point energy or other stuff we haven't thought of yet, we sort out the warp drive and colonize the rest of the multiverse...

Of course I don't believe it

But there again...

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 21 Aug 2007, 06:17

In the ancient world the problem of too much debt was easy to fix; they just cancelled it all.

I don?t really see debt as a major problem. Money appears out of thin air and has no intrinsic value in itself so debt has no real meaning.

What I find of more importance is the physical world. We may have the ability to make up as much money as we want but we do have limits to physical resources. We have maintained unsustainable growth in the past partly through cutting back (wars and diseases fulfil this role) and partly because we have had so much resources to start with, most of which we have had very little use of these past thousands of years and party because we have used our intelligence to invent new things. Now it looks like we could reach the end of some this century ? and even our inventiveness has its limits.

redlantern · Post by **redlantern** » 21 Aug 2007, 09:45

isenhand wrote:In the ancient world the problem of too much debt was easy to fix; they just cancelled it all.

I don?t really see debt as a major problem. Money appears out of thin air and has no intrinsic value in itself so debt has no real meaning.

Unless you foresee a general debt forgiveness happening (and the consequent expropriation of British interests as we have an overall trade deficit) then let's confine ourselves to the current situation.

I bet that "debt has no real meaning" goes down really well when you try it on with the Council Tax people. It has meaning to the extent that the State decides it does.

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 21 Aug 2007, 10:20

redlantern wrote:I bet that "debt has no real meaning" goes down really well when you try it on with the Council Tax people. It has meaning to the extent that the State decides it does.

stumuz · Post by **stumuz** » 21 Aug 2007, 10:55

redlantern Wrote,
??Unless you foresee a general debt forgiveness happening (and the consequent expropriation of British interests as we have an overall trade deficit) then let's confine ourselves to the current situation??

Yes, they are called IVA?S and they let feckless borrowers off the hook.

redlantern wrote,

??I bet that "debt has no real meaning" goes down really well when you try it on with the Council Tax people. It has meaning to the extent that the State decides it does??

Again, rack up a load of debt and then say you cannot pay it back because you have no job or assets and you will not have to pay the council tax either!!

redlantern · Post by **redlantern** » 21 Aug 2007, 14:10

redlantern Wrote,
??Unless you foresee a general debt forgiveness happening (and the consequent expropriation of British interests as we have an overall trade deficit) then let's confine ourselves to the current situation??

Yes, they are called IVA?S and they let feckless borrowers off the hook.

IVA's hit feckless lenders as well. They don't automatically forgive any debt and they only apply if there is no realistic hope of the person's financial circumstances improving within 5 years to the extent that they could pay off the principal on the unsecured loans. Lenders who have provided loans to those people deserve to lose their money. I'd submit it's a different story for the bulk of people who are getting suckered into graduating with 20K from Uni and 4x income through the mortgage on the belief that continual growth is going to keep happening. Their collapse takes down plenty of people with them. Banks are geared 10:1 or more on their loans, so they only need a 10% default rate to become technically insolvent. At which time the Bank of England has little choice but to bail them out or do the Fed method of lowering interest rates to keep their credit going.

?
?I bet that "debt has no real meaning" goes down really well when you try it on with the Council Tax people. It has meaning to the extent that the State decides it does??
Again, rack up a load of debt and then say you cannot pay it back because you have no job or assets and you will not have to pay the council tax either!!

Council tax still applies even if you have an IVA. IVAs are an alternative to bankruptcy, not a panacea. Try looking here for information, not opinion.

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » 21 Aug 2007, 14:59

>> Money appears out of thin air and has no intrinsic value in itself

Money is a token roughly equivalent to energy / effort / work / resources.

If you give away work / resources and receive money in return ... and then the money is nullified ... you have effectively been cheated or robbed.

Debt is where you have received services / energy etc in return for a LATER transfer of money tokens from you to the lender.

Essentially you have promised to work hard to obtain some money to cancel the debt.

A debt forgiveness is essentially someone saying "You can keep the goodies .. forget about the working hard bit."

That's OK if you lent the money ... but if the banks or state do this, then they are essentially cheating the hard workers who produced the goodies in the first place.

Debt forgiveness simply encourages bad behaviour ... and sets a bad example "If we don't pay this debt then they'll let us off. Then we can do it all over again""

To summarise: Money DOES have value.

stumuz · Post by **stumuz** » 21 Aug 2007, 15:04

IVA'S , bankrupt , you can still walk away from your debt, which is great for the financial inept.
The point I was trying to make is this, rack up a load of debt and get someone else to pay it off. It makes good financial sense,

Papillon · Post by **Papillon** » 24 Aug 2007, 19:12

Debt exceeds GDP!!

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/a ... geNumber=1

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 26 Aug 2007, 20:26

Friday's headline in our local rag the "Bury Times" was all about how local mortgage advisors had advised applicants to lie about their income on their application forms to get massive mortgages.

This particular woman was up in court for it, because she had defaulted on her payments, and she was saying that she knows loads of people in the same position.

Looks like the UK is very much not exempt from the "sub-prime" (what a euphemism!!!) mortgage market troubles.

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 05 Jan 2008, 13:38

Latest scary stats in an updated link

http://www.creditaction.org.uk/debt-statistics.html

chubbygristle · Post by **chubbygristle** » 06 Jan 2008, 01:22

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 2583451279

Probably been posted on here a few times before, but for those who have never seen it and don't really get the whole money / debt thing it's worth 47 mins of your time...

... it began in 1694

happy new year btw