UK government debt is around £1 trillion, equal to over 70% of our GDP, and way above highest levels since 1975.  It is continuing to rise fast, and many people are worried about it.  But here are some interesting facts about hidden ways to reduce the debt, and its real impact.

Europe is drifting apart into two groups:  high risk and low risk countries.  The greatest challenge for the future survival of Europe in current form will be finding a way to bridge the gap between them.

It is easy for governments in emerging nations to focus policy on helping or attracting big business, but small family-owned businesses are usually the greatest creator of new jobs, partly because there are so many of them. If a million businesses with an average of 10 employees, each manage to employ an average of just one extra person each, that’s a million new jobs.  But most of these businesses will have started out informally and very small.  Lessons from informal street-traders in India and Vietnam.

“Smart Economics is about more than numbers in a globalised, rapidly changing, multi-cultural, digital world.” It is easy to gain the impression from TV news channels and Business news pages that the entire global economy has been in free-fall for the last 2-3 years, and that recovery is a long way off.  By 2011, GWP had bounced back to levels seen in 2004-2007.  The world economy only shrank for just over 12 months. It is true that our world continues to be vulnerable to a further economic shock, but we do need to see these things in the context of longer history, and longer future. What kind of events could trigger a second global shock?