Posted on 12/24/2006 12:01:58 AM PST by bruinbirdman
THE government will this week close a chapter in Britain’s wartime history by completing the repayment of a loan taken out with America more than 60 years ago, just after the second world war. Treasury officials said the repayment of the US war loan taken out under a 1945 agreement would be completed by December 31.
The loan dates back to September 1945. From 1941, Britain and other allied nations had received large quantities of equipment and supplies under Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease programme.
Britain received about $30 billion of goods — just over £7 billion at the prevailing exchange rate — during the war years, in effect gifts from America. But in September 1945 the US abruptly announced an end to the Lend-Lease programme, despite the need for large-scale reconstruction and with Britain on its knees economically.
Goods already in Britain or in transit were sold to the UK government at heavily discounted prices — one-tenth of their value — the amount paid being in the form of a loan.
The amount, together with a line of credit, was $4.34 billion with a 2% interest rate, originally intended to be paid back over 50 years beginning in 1950.
Some critics, including Lord Keynes, saw the loan as a means used by America to subjugate Britain after the war.
As it was, keeping up the payments was often difficult. There were six years when Britain deferred payment as a result of economic crises and pressure on the official reserves. But this week’s £43m remittance will pay it off.
Many war loans are never repaid.
Britain borrowed money from America during the first world war but never fully settled the debt. This was because President Herbert Hoover declared a debt moratorium during the global financial crisis of 1931.
At the time of the moratorium, Britain was owed more in war debt by other countries than it owed to America.
Keynes is a proof of the fact that economics is the art of finding a best-fit straight line to a single data point.
Perhaps you should pay US for the burning of Toronto in the 1812-15 war,which was the very reason we burnt the WH.
A fact I have found many Americans to be ignorant of.Mind you so are 99.9& of Britons.....lol
And can we have damages for your invasion of Canada in 1775-76?...
Dont get angry,just some playful joshing.
Merry Xmas.
That would be the same Britain which had hundreds of thousands of troops gaurding the land,sea and air of the Europe and the world for 50 yrs alonsgide its American ally?.
The same Britain that unlike America actually had a Cold War record of DEFEATING COMMUNISM:
Malaya
Oman
Aden
And the word espenses reminds me of the £1.2 BILLION pounds that Britain gave to AMERICA in ww2 in 'reverse lend lease' which included footing the ENTIRE BILL for ALL American expense incurred in Britain between 1942 and 1945.
Oh and we did the same between 1946 and 1991.Britain's Cold War 'reverse lend lease' must have footed the bill for BILLIONS in American expense.
BUT you know what?.
Unlike you,I am GLAD that we footed any bill and had your nation as allies against the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact.
Unlike you,I dont begrudge a penny....
Will you pay us back for burning Toronto?....
The very reason we burnt the WH.
A fact Americans ignore.
Well, folks, if we really want to get down to it...the War of 1812 started because Britain was impressing (kidnapping) American sailors off American ships. And Britain was not upholding its end of the Treaty signed with the US to end the Revolutionary War. Britain was hogging the fisheries and the western territories which the Treaty stipulated they had to vacate.
But I am willing to let bygones be bygones. It is Christmas after all!
Seriously.....
I am NOT one of those who feels that Britain is beholden to the United States for our help in WW11 and I would have written off the debt or never charged it in the first place.
Winston Churchill has always been a hero to me and I have read every book he has written - some more than once. His speeches ring through the decades now as they did then. I do wish however, that Churchill's Britain was still now as it was then.
As we share a family/culture history with Britain, we too, are going down the same road of political correctness, socialism, leftwing corosion of our moral fiber. The England that held off the might of Germany, that was ready to pick up staves to fight on the beaches, if need be - I fear is no longer - or soon to be no longer.
That grieves me - as it grieves me that America too is suffering that fate. And just at a time when we need one another's strength.
Merry Christmas.
Paying off a debt whether to a friend or not, is an honorable thing to do so it does not surprise me that Britain repaid the loan. Most of the rest of Europe expected us to not only fight their war, but also to pay for it. My father lost his youngest brother in Europe, and until he died he said Europe wasn't worth it, dear old Dad, right again.
The Times December 27, 2006
Sixty years on, we finally pay for the war
Philip Webster, Political Editor and Elizabeth Judge
£45m is the last instalment to US
'Support helped to defeat Nazis'
Britain will this week pay off the last instalment of the multibillion-dollar loans that were secured from the United States and Canada more than sixty years ago to help fund the war effort.
On Friday this country will make its final repayment on the US$4.33 billion loan given by the United States in 1945. Canada will also receive the last payment on its Can$1.25 billion loan.
The payments — $83.25 million (£43 million) to the US Government and $22.7 million to Canada — are the last of fifty instalments that have been paid since 1950, totalling $7.5 billion to the United States and $2 billion to Canada, including 2 per cent annual interest on the initial loans.
Britain agreed the loan with the United States in 1945 in the form of a direct line of credit worth $3.75 billion and a lend-lease facility worth $585 million. It was intended as a final settlement for the financial claims of each country against the other for costs arising out of the Second World War, and provided the essential capital to fund Britain’s postwar construction. Canada followed suit with a direct line of credit of $1.25 billion agreed in 1946.
Ed Balls, the City minister, told The Times last night that it was a historic moment. “This week we finally honour in full our commitments to the US and Canada for the support they gave us 60 years ago. It was vital support which helped Britain defeat Nazi Germany and secure peace and prosperity in the postwar period. We honour our commitments to them now as they honoured their commitments to us all those years ago.”'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2520100,00.html
Taiwai is/was a Japanese colony?
I spoke too soon. Just researched it and discovered that China passed Formosa (now Taiwan) to Japan by treaty in 1895 only to take it back after WWII.
Today's pounds is worth less than that of WWII relative to the dollar. If all of America's expenditures were as productive as this loan I would shout with joy.
Fezziwig's Christmas feast cost 3-4 pounds, according to the Ghost of Christmas Past. How many pounds would it cost today?
Thank you for your service to our cause, and to your great country Canada. I tear up hearing your national anthem at hockey games thinking of D-Day, Vietnam, and other places where Canadian and US blood have been shed for freedom's sake.
Here's to you.
As is mine...ignore the morons. Life is too short.
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