Philip Hammond will not tell the truth about the UK’s debt today.
It is likely that he will say that the UK will notionally borrow substantially more than the £55.5 billion that was budgeted by George Osborne for this year.
What he will not say is that £60 billion of government debt has also been cancelled this year. This is because of the Bank of England’s QE programme, which will purchase £60 billion of gilts during the year. And what that means is that the government will have bought £60 billion of its own debts. And as its own accounts show, that cancels the debt in question.
No, it does not cancel the debt in question.
Something we can prove. When that debt matures, as indeed some of that debt has, does it just disappear in a puff of smoke? No, it does not, more debt is issued to roll the old debt over.
It ain’t cancelled, balancing the accounts books is balancing the accounts books, not reality.
It is debt that requires interest payment, and the £60 billion of gilts repurchased will not be subject to interest payment anymore.
Idiot. Treasury pays BoE interest on the QE debt.
And nor will they ever be repaid: even if they expire they will simply be replaced by new debt and almost no net cost.
See, they’re replaced at maturity. Thus they haven’t been cancelled, have they?
Jeebus, he’s supplying his own disproofs now, disproving his own contentions in the one post.
Well, looking on the bright side, it does mean that in subsequent posts no one can accuse him of inconsistency since he’s already dealt with that in this one.
We’re gonna need more Fact Sherpas.
Meanwhile, someone plots some real data over a Ritchie conjecture and prediction from 2014 on big and small company corporation tax. The result is, well, as you would expect.
https://twitter.com/StrongerInNos/status/801057515094102021
Anyone read Flowers For Algernon?
Murphy starts out knowing about tallying totals of numbers in a single column.
He then learns the principles of double entry bookkeeping.
In his current period of mental dotage, his faculties are well into atrophy, he forgets about or no longer understands double entry and regresses to an understanding of single entry only (“every debit does not need a credit”).
Meanwhile in his Twit, sorry Twitter, commentary on the Autumn Statement he says ” I will be fair when it is appropriate”.
So there we have it; fairness is conditional in Murphyland.
“We’re gonna need more Fact Sherpas”
And Fact Sherpa Coordinators.
Who’s going to look after the diversity of Fact Sherpas, and their coordinators?
There will need to be Fact Sherpa qualifications and an official body.
And then there’s the risk of accredited Fact Sherpas selling their influence.
Could some sort of equivalent of the Fair Tax Mark not be awarded to qualifying Sherpas for a suitable fee?
Something like
Fully Audited Register of Trained Sherpas
You have all justified the need for a Fact Sherpa Liberation Officer to put a stop to your micro-aggression against the hard-working Fact Sherpas.
Liberate the Fact Sherpas from the bondage the neoliberal fascist republican democratic Nazi dictatorships have put them into.
It goes without saying that these will be Not-For-Profit Fact Sherpas?
… and of course, that will include the appropriate quota of LBGTQ Sherpas…?
“Jeebus, he’s supplying his own disproofs now, disproving his own contentions in the one post.”
Now???
He’s been doing this for as long as I’ve known him to exist.
Flowers for Algernon? Read that when I were a young lad.
Powerful impact.