national debt
national debt
national debt
na′tional debt′
n.
national debt
| Noun | 1. |  national debt - the debt of the national government (as distinguished from the debts of individuals and businesses and political subdivisions) |
| 单词 | national debt | |||
| 释义 | national debtnational debtnational debtna′tional debt′n. national debt
national debtnational debt:see debt, publicdebt, public,indebtedness of a central government expressed in money terms, often referred to as national debt. The debt is computed differently by nearly every nation. ..... Click the link for more information. . National Debtthe total indebtedness of the state in outstanding loans and unpaid interest. Based on the sphere in which loans have been floated, national debt is divided into internal and external. According to the term of repayment, a distinction is made between capital debt (indebtedness on which the term of payment has not expired) and current debt (the term of payment expires in the given or following fiscal year). Under capitalism, the occurrence and growth of the national debt are engendered by the mode of production itself. V. I. Lenin pointed out that national debts, like taxes, are objectively necessary for the maintenance of a bourgeois state (see Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 33, p. 12). The indebtedness of the world’s capitalist states attains huge amounts. In the USA by 1970 it totaled $485 billion (including the indebtedness of state and local government bodies), and in Great Britain,£44 billion. In many capitalist countries the national debt increases more rapidly than national income, so that the ratio of the total national debt to national income increases. Whereas in the USA in 1914 the national debt amounted to 3.3 percent of national income, in 1969 it was 63 percent; in Great Britain the corresponding figures are 31.2 and 126.1 percent, respectively. The direct cause of the increase in the national debt is budget deficits. In addition the growth of the national debt entails a direct increase in the state’s obligations because debt obligations are presented annually to the treasury for payment. In developing countries, the national debt consists primarily of external loans. In 1970 the indebtedness of developing countries had reached $60 billion. In the 1960’s the growth rate of external indebtedness was approximately double that of these countries’ export revenues. The growth of payments on external debts is a heavy burden on the economies of developing countries. For example, the Latin American countries spend about 35 percent of their currency revenues from exports on repayment of external indebtedness In prerevolutionary Russia, the systematic growth of the national debt was based on the issue of numerous state loans and treasury-guaranteed private loans. As of Jan. 1, 1914, it totaled 8,811,200,000 rubles. After the October Socialist Revolution, in accordance with a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on Jan. 21 (Feb. 3), 1918, all national debts of the tsarist and Provisional governments were annulled, while the rights of small-scale holders of state securities were preserved. In socialist countries, the national debt is caused by the necessity of using loans as one of the methods of attracting the population’s monetary resources for net socialist investment and the improvement of the people’s well-being. As of Apr. 1, 1957, when the issue of state loans to the population by subscription was ended and their repayment was deferred for 20 years, the USSR national debt amounted to about 26 billion rubles. The Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU (1971), taking into account the country’s increased economic potential, adopted a decision to redeem ahead of schedule (by six years) the loan bonds remaining in the public’s possession. In 1974–75, 2 billion rubles’ worth of bonds will be redeemed, and in subsequent years the size of payments on bonds will be increased; all bonds will be redeemed by 1990. R. D. VINOKUR and T. V. GUIDA national debtNational debtNational debtNational DebtNational debt.The total value of all outstanding Treasury bills, notes, and bonds that the federal government owes investors is referred to as the national debt. The government holds some of this debt itself, in accounts such as the Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, and Highway, Airport and Airway Trust Funds. The rest is held by individual and institutional investors, both domestic and international, or by overseas governments. There is a debt ceiling imposed by Congress, but it is typically raised when outstanding debt approaches that level. Interest on the national debt is a major item in the federal budget, but the national debt is not the same as the federal budget deficit. The deficit is the amount by which federal spending exceeds federal income in a fiscal year. national debtorgovernment debtthe money owed by central government to domestic and foreign lenders. A national debt arises as a result of the government spending more than it receives in taxation and other receipts (BUDGET DEFICIT). This may arise because of, for example, a ‘one-off’ event (the financing of a war) or reflect the government's commitment to an expansionary FISCAL POLICY.National debt in the UK is made up of a number of financial instruments, primarily short-dated TREASURY BILLS and long-dated BONDS, together with national savings certificates. INTEREST on the national debt is paid out of current budget receipts. Concern is sometimes expressed at the size of the national debt. In 2003, for example, the UK's net national debt stood at £375,200 million, compared to current GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT of £1,099,896 million. Provided that the bulk of the debt is held by domestic residents and institutions, however, there is no cause for alarm. In terms of the CIRCULAR FLOW OF NATIONAL INCOME, the interest paid on the national debt to domestic lenders is only a TRANSFER PAYMENT and does not represent a net reduction in the real resources of the economy or compromise the ability of the economy to provide goods and services. In 2003,90% of the UK's national debt was held domestically and interest payments accounted for only 5% of total GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE. In recent years, however, particular attention has been focused on the potentially INFLATIONARY effects of deficits financing (see PUBLIC SECTOR BORROWING REQUIREMENT) whereby deficits are financed by excessive monetary expansion. In the European Union, ‘fiscal stability’ has been written into the MAASTRICHT TREATY, with countries being under an obligation to ensure that total outstanding government debt should not exceed 60% of GDP. The UK government has gone further than this. Under the ‘sustainable-investment rule’, the government has committed itself to ensuring that total outstanding public debt should not exceed a maximum of 40% of GDP. See BUDGET ( GOVERNMENT), PUBLIC SECTOR DEBT REQUIREMENT. national debt
Words related to national debt
|
|||
| 随便看 |
|
英语词典包含2567994条英英释义在线翻译词条，基本涵盖了全部常用单词的英英翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。