Still more alarming is the fact that we have now added a chunk of debt the size of Argentina’s economy to our already bulging barrel of borrowings.
The national debt, which we have been trying to reduce since the end of the Second World War, has ballooned more suddenly than ever before.
Before the ONS's decision it stood at £537 billion, or 37.7 per cent of our gross domestic product, putting us towards the bottom of the world debt league.
Now, post-Northern Rock, it amounts to around 45 per cent of GDP - worse than the United States, even after paying the bulk of the costs for the Iraq war, and barely better than Germany.
- Treasury suffers from Northern Rock debt, February 08, 2008.
3. Watching all the fuss on Monday about Apple’s announcement that it will soon start paying a dividend and buying back some shares, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that the Cupertino-based gadget manufacturer isn’t a corporation in the normal sense of the word: it’s a worldwide cult. If more evidence were needed, witness the long lines that formed outside Apple stores late last week to purchase the new iPad, which, whisper it softly lest you get stomped on in the rush, isn’t much different from the old one.
What other company could dominate a day’s news simply by saying it plans on distributing directly to stockholders perhaps a quarter of the profit it generates? If it were any company other than Apple, that story would be confined to the business section. It’s not as if the sums involved are mind-blowing. Relative to Apple’s revenues, which could well total upwards of $150 billion this year, a $10 billion dividend payout is small beer.
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