National debt

I believe government has a fiscal responsibility to their electorate and population to spend prudently. Sometime it is not that big of a problem on hoew much debt any ruling party can accumulate for the nation and future generation, it is the end result that count. For example, USA had accumulated so much debt over the past decade while the national GDP is only growing at snail pace, and the budget deficit increased in such a way more than the annual GDP growth rate several time over is worrisome. It shows that all the previous federal government spending is not helping the economy at all except for the sake of funding BIG government, it is a bad sign for the country future no matter how you look at it. If you look at the huge spending of all those indebted eurozone members, you can never understand where is all those amount of $$ gone to, while their economy remain lackluster and negative growth over the years. May be it is time for those voters to take a hard look at their own elected government officials and must decide to kick them out of office in next election.

What a shocking figure!It is up to its neck,so to speak ,in debt.I think it is partly due to Global recession.

What the law makers fail to realize is that the money they are spending is Not Their Money. Any money the government has was taken by force or the threat of force from the people. If the violate the trust given them it is up to the people to change the government. In the US and other Democratic countries we get to do that every election.

I am ashamed of the amount of national debt our county has. If I knew about finance perhaps I would speak out but I do not. I think the US is working on getting the amount down and if it works perhaps Britain can learn from them. And vice versa.

Some people claim that debt doesn't matter when speaking about countries. It's an imagined number. That's definitely an attitude held by a lot of folks in America. I can't speak to folks in the UK. That attitude allows for the cycle to be perpetuated. Folks don't care about debt enough to stop it, so they believe they can keep spending and keep tweaking rules and regulations while hoping that one day it all magically bounces back and that you can have the best of all things: high salaries for all, quality insurance for all, jobs as a right for all, pensions for all, etc. A government doesn't "earn" anything, but it sure as hell can squander other people's money. Every government should be focusing on creating an environment where wealth can be created. The more wealth that is created, the more money the government gets. Then it can start spending on its pipe dreams. Right now, most governments are working in reverse. They're spending on their pipe dreams, and we're all F'd if these visions fail to become reality. In America, if you ever hear a politician speaking about "innovation" or "investment" or anything of that sort, that means they want to SPEND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS THAT WE DON'T HAVE in order to gamble on something like solar panels making us incredibly wealthy. !sdrawkcab gnikrow era snorom esehT Good luck to you guys over there. I hope we both pull our heads out of our arses, because we can't afford to help each other out.

Hi, Telmesh, I live in Bulgaria - a small East European country from the former Soviet block. We are poor, we had too many financial problems and for several years we have a currency board. I think that the board gives us a stability because I don't trust our own politicians - who does ! But the record British national debt shows that the overall problem in Europe is more serious than we were thinking.

the public debt of developed countries is ballooning to outrageous proportions. as you noted, the US government has 15 trillion US dollars debt while the british government has 1 trillion pounds debt. these amounts are so huge to imagine for countries such as the philippines. although we also have huge debts, and we are paying it slowly.