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Tony Blair Steps Down

The Wall St. Journal has a timely opinion piece on his successor, Gordon Brown, a man whose foreign policy is at this point, a mystery.

Wow. That Sure Took a Long Time.

And yet we've never complained:

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.”

...The loans have been repaid on the same principle as a home mortgage. Repayments cover both the capital sum borrowed and the interest due on the loan. In the 1950s and 1960s, payments were geared mainly to paying off the interest, while in latter years, the repayment of capital has increased.

Under the terms of the agreement, this country was allowed to defer up to six annual instalments and did so in 1956, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1976, on the grounds that international exchange rate conditions and the UK's foreign currency reserves made payments in those years impractical.

Link

An Excellent Use of the Venn Diagram

The Great British Venn Diagram