Friday 23 April 2010

Greece now paying over 10% for 2 year bonds

If you have a mortgage, you too ought to be concerned about the future direction of interest rates by now. Again I say, do you think you are a better credit risk than the Greek government?

Today I am reading that they are being forced to pay over 10% interest for 2 year loans (here). You, as just a regular person in the UK, can still fix your mortgage at about half that level for 5 years at the moment. It was only yesterday (here) that I was concerned at reading they were having to pay "only" 8%+ for 10 year loans. Will it be 12%+ on Monday? Will it be "not at any price" by the end of next week..?

Debt problems are starting to get out of control now. With the bond market beginning to seriously looking around at other countries with big deficits at this point, you should be aware that nobody has a faster growing budget deficit than us in the UK. Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling don't think it matters, but do you think the bond market agrees with them? The bond market is going to be the one deciding whether the debt is bought from the UK government at the end of the day, and I am confident they are increasingly going to say No Way Jose. There simply isn't enough money in the world for everyone's debt requirements to be satisfied at this point, only those with the very best credit rating and the most moderate deficits are going to get the cash they need going forward. Everybody else will just have to go and whistle.

If the bond market dries up for the UK, the alternatives are either that truly massive budget cuts must be implemented immediately (which will be politically unacceptable, so you can count this out already), or the Bank of England will restart the printing presses to buy the bonds (which will tank the value of the Pound again in the process). I think you know which of these outcomes is going to be the most likely.

There is no pain-free solution to this issue. Thirteen years of profligate social spending by the Labour government on the nation's creditcard has to be repaid now somehow, once again. When are the UK population going to understand that Labour = spending money the nation doesn't have, and eventual bankruptcy?

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