UK helps Liberia take big step towards debt clearance
The UK today assisted Liberia in taking a big step towards poverty reduction by helping it clear the arrears on debt it owes….

Alistair Darling went on to boast about how great this was for Liberia, which he described as a “HIPC”, a Heavily Indebted Poor Country. The 3 million inhabitants of Liberia have a government debt of $4.5 billion dollars, some £2.3 billion pounds or £767 per head.

Yesterday the ONS added £52 billion to the PSBR for Northern Rock taking the government’s admitted debts to 42% of GDP, busting Gordon’s already fiddled 40% golden rule. Gordon claims government debts stand at £536 billion, add in his off balance sheet fiddles like £725 billion of public sector pensions, £110 billion in payments due to companies in the next three decades under PFI and £18 billion of debt held by Network Rail and the figure is nearer £1.4 trillion, which is well over 100% of GDP. Now add on the private debts of credit card maxed-out Britons and the total debt is something like £2.7 trillion. Over £100,000 per household in Britain.

Which makes it seem very odd that Alistair Darling is bailing out the heavily indebted poor Liberians who have a tiny fraction of the debts that Labour has run up for Britons.