14Aug2022 下一任英首相面临公共财政危机

【今日短语】lay bare 戳穿，暴露无遗This pierced me like a sword, and seemed to lay bare my private disloyalty . 这句话象一把利剑刺透了我，似乎把我私下的不忠不义揭露了出来。-----------------------------原文如下：The day in the marketsby CHRIS GILES(来自：The Financial Time 金融时报)The winner of the Conservative party leadership contest will face huge extra costs to service the nation’s debt and pay social security benefits as a result of rising inflation and interest rates, according to Financial Times calculations.The estimates, which are an update to the Bank of England’s last official inflation forecast in March, show the UK’s debt and welfare payments bill soaring by more than £50bn next financial year.The findings forecast that debt service costs are likely to almost double next year, from £50bn to £95bn, because £500bn of the UK’s public debt is linked to the consumer price index.That bill falls as inflation comes down, but is replaced by higher social security benefits, which are also linked to prices, and are set to be £23bn higher every year by the time of the next election.These payments will leave the new Tory leader hoping tax revenues remain strong at a time when the BoE thinks the economy will slide into recession.In March, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that ministers would meet their own fiscal rules with £30bn of headroom to spare in 2024-25. But officials close to the Treasury and OBR say more severe forecasts will be laid bare by the fiscal watchdog by the time the new premier takes office. So far in the leadership campaign, both candidates have based tax and spending decisions on the March forecasts, not taking the big downgrade to growth and higher inflation and interest rates into account.The UK economy shrank 0.1 per cent in the second quarter, reflecting the cost of living crisis starting to hurt households across the country.Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that with inflation driving up costs, “the new prime minister will face a pretty difficult public finance situation”.The figures would be an underestimate of the public finance problem for Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss if the latest Goldman Sachs forecasts for inflation are fulfilled. The bank said yesterday that following the latest estimates of energy bills, CPI inflation was likely to peak at 14.4 per cent at the start of 2023.Professor Charlie Bean, former OBR committee member, said that the pressures on the public finances meant that the permanent tax cuts promised by Truss were “irresponsible”.“Liz Truss is thinking of permanent reductions in the tax burden and it’s a pretty open question whether £30bn of headroom is still there,” he said.

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