The Lemon Fool

My question is why we even bother issuing gilts.

We have our own bank. The BOE has funded the Treasury directly as recently as 2020 via the ways and means account.

I guess issuing debt lets the market be the judge of the perceived risks attached to the UK.

It also makes the government of the day more fiscally responsible. Sort of. We'd have to invent a new set of rules for them to adhere to.

And it provides a lot of jobs for the city types that make A living trading these things.

Its supposedly a bedrock for pension funds to avoid state support....but if the bedrock is government debt anyway....

Re: the deficit. The governments deficit is someone else's asset. Balancing the books will throttle the country. Like Japen, the US etc we're just going to have to live with it. Countries in the Eurozone might have problems since they gave up their currency sovereignty when they adopted the Euro.

As you say, Brexit gives us the tools to look at different ways of doing things.

1nvest wrote:

Urbandreamer wrote:I confess that I feel somewhat betrayed by our state over the open offer I subscribed to with the IT "Trig". The funds were used to build wind farms, which the state later slapped a "windfall tax" upon. I won't be investing in any further UK renewable energy and note that trig is disposing of UK assets.

That's backstabber Sunak for you. Yes the UK should be making big pushes into greater self sufficiencies on the food and energy fronts. Sunak and his recent oil ventures/associations however along with hitting wind is a clear indication of where his real loyalties lay. The quicker we're rid-off the better.

Where Sunak's real loyalties lay? Patently obvious they lay running some high flying financial corporation or hedge fund in California.

A good example of how to ruin an economy?
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/north-seas-biggest-producer-swings-062304810.html
I would have thought that giving companies like Harbour Energy an incentive to develop, for example, (exportable) Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technolgy might be a better way to proceed, instead of bludgeoning them with ideologically based taxation. But all oilmen are all baddies and must be punished for making us buy electric cars and heat pumps, the logic seems to go.
S

spasmodicus wrote:A good example of how to ruin an economy?
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/north-seas-biggest-producer-swings-062304810.html
I would have thought that giving companies like Harbour Energy an incentive to develop, for example, (exportable) Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technolgy might be a better way to proceed, instead of bludgeoning them with ideologically based taxation. But all oilmen are all baddies and must be punished for making us buy electric cars and heat pumps, the logic seems to go.
S

Don't get me started. Coal is used, not only for heat but it's chemical properties. There are alternatives for many BUT NOT ALL processes. So let's close our one remaining coal mine, deny opening one specifically to provide coal for smelting and import all our coal!

That coal WILL be imported, as there are not really good alternatives.