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Be careful, the UK's total external debt has exceeded 10 trillion[0]. We have huge financial sector debt here and are worse exposed to financial shock from the banking system than almost all countries globally.

Agreed that getting out of the USD hegemony is inevitable. As to whether it will be an orderly transition, I'd say that is far from assured, especially in the UK.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_d...

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I'm not sure that "external debt" is a great measure in this context - it seems to include international liabilities so if people invest/deposit their money in the UK (which seems like a good thing) that creates an external liability (i.e. whoever put the money here will want it back at some point).

Given the UK has a huge financial sector you would presumably expect a large external debt:

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2984/economics/uk-external...

People who put their money in generally want some form of return, so its not a bad measure.

A large financial sector shouldnt mean you have large net external liabilities. It does tend to mean they are very hard to measure though.

Clearly the UK financial sector is too big for us to bail out, we should have let it go under in the last crisis.

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