Not reducing debt is the greater danger


who wrote to the Financial Times last week, I would like to refer them and the reader to my paper A Bankruptcy Foretold , published by the IEA at the end of 2008. I calculated that, if you include accrued pensions commitments, then the UK government’s debt was a shocking 270% of GDP – over three times higher than the official figure used as evidence by Lord Layard et al. Moreover, the effects of the banking crisis and fiscal stimulus mean the situation will have worsened considerably since my research was undertaken.

IEA Pensions Fellow

Nick Silver is the Pensions Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Nick is also Director of Callund Consulting Limited, where he provides public policy advice on social security, pensions and consultancy services to corporate clients in all continents, in respect of non-state employee benefits. From 1998-2005, Nick was Director of Silver Actuarial Services. Prior to this, he was Manager of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the actuarial Department, and worked as an Actuary from 1991 to 1997. Nick received an MSc in Public Financial Policy (Merit) in 2004 from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He also has a BSc Hon in Mathematics from Bristol University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.



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