The National Debt

Ch 1 Introduction: why should we worry? Ch 2 Pre-history Medieval Public Finance Tallies Towards the Civil War The Commonwealth and Restoration Ch 3 The Beginnings of the National Debt The Order of Repayment and the Stop of the Exchequer First Long-term Loans The Bank of England The South Sea Company The South Sea Bubble Appendix to Ch 3: Bond Vocabulary Ch 4 War and Peace in the Eighteenth Century The Structure of Indebtedness: Repayment, Conversion, Consolidation Walpole's Sinking Fund Pelham's Consolidation: the Birth of the Consol The Seven Years' War and the War of American Independence Loan Contractors Appendix to Ch.4: Bond Mechanics Ch 5 Pitt's Sinking Fund and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars Repayment and the Sinking Fund The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars Lord Henry Petty's Scheme The Floating Debt Income Tax Inflation Ch 6 The Nineteenth Century: a century of peace Early Years Abolition of Slavery Gladstone Productive Investment Northcote's New Sinking Fund 2¿% Consols Summarising the State of the Debt in the Late Nineteenth Century Local Loans Naval Installations The Boer War Ch 7 The First World War John Maynard Keynes and the Philosophy of the War Budgetary Consequences of the War Taxation vs Borrowing Mechanisms of Borrowing The Costs: International Borrowing The Costs: Piketty Aftermath and Reparations The Paris Peace Conference Ch 8 The Inter-War Years "Drastic" repayment? The Floating Debt Stabilising the medium-term Debt Reparations and Inter-allied Loans Ch 9 The Second World War Strategy, domestic borrowing and taxation Foreign Borrowing: the USA Foreign Borrowing: the Sterling Balances Aftermath: the US Loan and the sterling balances Default and the nature of the Monetary System: Devaluation Ch 10 The Post-WWII World The External Constraint; the IMF loan Monetary Constraint; Mrs Thatcher A Period in Two Halves Wars Nationalisation and Privatisation North Sea Oil and 3G Licences Index-linked Gilts and Strips The Debt Management Office The Euro The Crisis of 2008 Very Long-Dated Gilts and the End of Consols Ch 11 The Debt: Other Standards of Comparison International comparisons Debt Sustainability "Optimal" Debt? Ch 12 Is there more than the National Debt? Whole-of-Government Accounts Box: the Private Finance Initiative The Fiscal Sustainability Report Private-Sector Indebtedness Ch 13 Conclusions