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  • will mean Austerity has to be turned up a notch.

    Or Corbyn gets in and we have an epic wave of New-Deal-style infrastructure projects, borrowed from the world markets at horrific interest rates, plunging us into epic levels of deficit that match Japan.

  • Unless you're predicting interest rates post-Brexit, take another look at cost of government borrowing. Then take discounting into consideration. The UK should have been borrowing over the last handful of years and doing exactly that.

    Additionally, Japan's problem is also demographic. Comparisons are not particularly useful.

  • The Japan thing was sort of tounge in cheek as they have massive levels of debt but the markets still lend to them without worrying about their notional balance sheet.

    But government borrowing is still subject to the market, and those prices will likely be higher post-Brexit and potentially under JC. Whether that negates the benefits is another story.

  • A lot of Japan's debt is also held domestically, meaning that it is less likely that investors will pull their money out. It is useful though to keep in mind that Italy and Greece for example ran into massive trouble by running up too much debt and investors losing confidence. 1 percentage point change in the interest rate the UK pays, say a move back to the average for 1998-2011, would cost roughly 20bn or 2.5% of the UK budget ( very roughly) . Also depends on what you spend the borrowed money on.

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