How long does it take to pay back debt?
Whenever I’ve borrowed money from a bank they’ve always been curiously interested in finding out when I intended to pay them back.
After the huge bank bailouts earlier this year I noticed that the UK government had given more money to one company, Lloyds TSB, than it had given to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined for their entire annual budgets. That’s the money to govern and run three countries, and the lives of 9.7 million people.
I mentioned this to my friendly bank manager and he smiled and said “Ah yes, but the payment to Lloyds TSB was a one-off, whereas the budget for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is spent every year.”
This week the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced he was handing out a further £30.5 billion of our money to the banks — £25 billion to the Royal Bank of Scotland and £5.5 billion to Lloyds TSB. I guess that’s a second-off.
I wonder if he asked them when they intended to pay us back? Because I’ve figured it out for him.
If representatives of RBS and Lloyds TSB were to stand in front of the Chancellor and hand him £60 every minute, for every hour of the day, 24 hours a day, every day of the week, every week of the year, how long do you think it would take to pay us back the £30.5 billion we’ve just given them?
Nine hundred and sixty seven years. All clear by the year 2976 AD then.