Varied lefties – especially MMT types – get very shriekie when you use the household analogy for government finances. Yet, at a certain level, it’s a perfectly good analogy:
Budget 2024: Borrowing costs surge after Reeves plots debt-fuelled spending spree
Sure and anyone can get a bit of freebie credit out of suppliers. Overdrafts cost a bit more, mortgages less than that but you’ve got to have security. And so on – but it is true that as you borrow more then perceived risks rises and you’re paying more for all your borrowing. At some point you’re juggling credit card balances and then comes the prospect of Fred and his lead pipe collection methods.
The yield on 10-year gilts – the return the government promises to pay buyers of its debt – spiked by nine basis points to 4.41pc in the wake of Ms Reeves’s speech, an 11-month high.
Early stages yet but the analogy does hold.
My solution is to scrap all the climate change nonsense and go back to nice cheap coal, gas and oil.
But you already knew that!!
Don’t worry. Our friends in China or the Arabian Peninsula will buy all our debt.
So the 10y is now higher than it was after the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget — at which point the BoE were allowed to sack the prime minister. This time it’s different because?