UK Debt Levels Censored

On the day the Chancellor delivers what will undoubtedly be the UK’s toughest budget for decades, an interesting story is emerging that the British Government has pressurised the IMF to censor a document recording the true cost of the financial crisis.

The original table (below) documented a large number of countries and looked at the expected financial position at the end of 2009. The revised table (pdf) only considers the picture up to February 2009 and omits most of the countries shown in the original table.

From ByeByeBlighty’s perspective, the censored table is interesting to the extent that it allows readers to make a straightforward comparison of this year’s UK’s public finances with those of the countries most people immigrate to.

IMF Table: Government Debt and Cost of “Financial Stabilisation”

The table shows that the public finances of Australia (exceptionally good), New Zealand and Denmark are in the best shape. The governments of Spain, Canada and France do not enjoy as strong a financial position as the countries down under, but their position is still considerably better than the UK’s, where the cost of “financial stabilisation” will be higher than in any other developed country except Ireland.

As a consequence of the perilous state of its finances compared with other countries, taxation in the UK is almost certainly going to be higher and public services poorer for a generation than would otherwise have been the case.