BRITAIN’S national debt increased to over £3 trillion last month, rising to £3.005 trillion, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This historic high equates to over £100,000 per British household.
According to the ONS, the government paid out £10.9 billion the interest on this debt in September alone – the highest amount for that month since records began – and £1.6 billion more than in September last year.
Along with this massive debt pile, the ONS figures revealed that inflation was higher than previously predicted, driven by the soaring costs of fuel and the soaring costs of energy.
Heating oil inflation soared to 105% in September, up from 65% in August, following the cut in oil resulting from the US war on Iran.
This, along with the virtual collapse of the world’s oil reserves, is starting to feed into non-energy inflation in the UK and across the globe.
Britain is not alone in being overwhelmed by debt.
The French national debt stands at 3.5 trillion euros, on which it pays 65 billion euros a year in interest.
The US national debt stands at an eyewatering £40 trillion, and growing by the hour, on which it pays over $1trillion in interest payments.
Capitalism is in a doom-loop of debt where nations are forced to borrow money in order to pay off the increasing interest rates demanded by the banks, hedge fund and speculators who finance them.
Even the mighty US is no longer viewed as a ‘safe’ place by the international financial markets.
Mark Zandi, a top economist at Moody’s (a major American financial services company), described the crisis on Sunday saying: ‘A vicious cycle threatens to take hold, with higher rates adding to the interest payments and debt load, which in turn pushes rates up even more.’
With capitalism diving over the cliff into bankruptcy and recession, the ruling class is determined to make workers and their families pay the price.
In the UK, France, the US and across Europe, the bourgeoisie are united in demanding the working class bear the cuts through a massive austerity regime that dwarfs the one that followed the 2008 world banking crash.
In France, the government of president Macron is demanding budget cuts of up to 54 billion euros in an attempt to completely smash up the French social security system.
In the US, Trump has for over a year steadily cut social security benefits for American workers, and his most recent pledge was to go much further in order to provide the money for imperialist war.
In the UK, the Labour government has made clear its intention to make cuts to benefits for pensioners along with savage cuts to the welfare state.
Prime minster Andy Burnham has proclaimed Labour’s ‘moral duty’ is to protect a bankrupt capitalist system being strangled by debt by forcing workers and youth to bear the cost.
Capitalism internationally is at the end of the road as a progressive system, and can only offer a future of wars at home and abroad.
All attempts to rescue the capitalist system through economic sleight of hands and piling up debt along with waging wars in failed attempts to reimpose its economic domination over the world have led to the point where the only way out for the ruling class is to wage a class war on workers.
The working class has demonstrated that it will never accept having their lives destroyed to keep the bosses, bankers and billionaire hedge funds from complete collapse.
The historic task immediately facing workers and youth is to put an end to bankrupt capitalism by forcing the trade union leaders to mobilise the strength of the working class in mass general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments and bring in workers governments and socialism.
This task demands the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to provide the leadership required for the victory of the world socialist revolution!
