{"id":23735,"date":"2014-01-13T08:56:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T13:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23735"},"modified":"2014-01-13T08:56:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T13:56:17","slug":"an-independent-scotland-and-the-uks-existing-debts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/13\/an-independent-scotland-and-the-uks-existing-debts\/","title":{"rendered":"An independent Scotland and the UK&#8217;s existing debts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-25712350\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Peston<\/a> examines the question of whether a post-referendum Scotland would be debt-free or would have a share in the existing debt obligations of the United Kingdom:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This morning&#8217;s statement from the Treasury that the UK will stand behind all its sovereign debts, whether or not Scotland&#8217;s people vote for independence, is in a way a statement of the bleedin&#8217; obvious.<\/p>\n<p>That debt, all \u00a31.4 trillion of it, is an obligation of the National Loans Fund.<\/p>\n<p>And nothing can change that &mdash; whether Scotland were to decide to secede (or, to pick an unlikely corollary, in the event that the People&#8217;s Liberation Army of West Sussex, miffed about fracking, were to declare UDI).<\/p>\n<p>So why has the Treasury chosen to say that the UK will honour its debts, whatever Scotland does?<\/p>\n<p>Well, it is because investors &mdash; whom we may think of as sophisticated and informed (ahem) &mdash; have been increasingly asking the Treasury and the Debt Management Office for clarification of the status of the UK&#8217;s financial obligations in the event of a fracturing of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Who would not vote for independence if an autonomous, separate Scotland would be set free from the burden of UK debts currently equivalent to 76% of GDP or national income (on the latest estimates by the Office for Budget Responsibility)?<\/p>\n<p>Except that even Alex Salmond and the Scot Nats don&#8217;t believe that an independent Scotland could, in practice, walk away from its fair share of the UK&#8217;s debts &mdash; even if they would have the legal ability to do so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Peston examines the question of whether a post-referendum Scotland would be debt-free or would have a share in the existing debt obligations of the United Kingdom: This morning&#8217;s statement from the Treasury that the UK will stand behind all its sovereign debts, whether or not Scotland&#8217;s people vote for independence, is in a way [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[71,338,114],"class_list":["post-23735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","tag-debt","tag-scotland","tag-separatism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6aP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23736,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23735\/revisions\/23736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}