State of British Public Debt

Since the end of 2008 the total size of the British government borrowing has more than doubled from 617 billion to 1.39 trillion. And that excludes the money we have lent ourselves through the Bank of England, if you count that the total size of the debt has nearly tripled to 1.78 trillion.

At the end of 2008 v Now (total debt including QE):

• Pension & Insurance funds: 38% v 20%
• Foreign investors: 33% v 25%
• Banks: 4% v 28%
• Bank of England: 0 v 22%
• Other Finance Institutions: 22% v 5%

Of all the extra money the UK government has borrowed since 2008, the banks have lent us 41% and the Bank of England has lent us 34%.

Interestingly, the total that UK banks borrowed from us in their bail out was £456Bn, and since then we have borrowed an extra £479Bn from the banks. So we gave them the money to save themselves, and they lent it back to us. We are now paying £5 million an hour in interest on government debts. As the banks own 28% of our debt, we are paying them £33.6 million a day for the privilege of borrowing the money we lent them in the first place.

Data from UK Debt Management Office, http://www.dmo.gov.uk/index.aspx?page=Gilts/Data