Gambling with the national debt

From Mike Smithson comes the news that you can get odds of 6-4 on the UK government losing its AAA credit rating.

Alistair Darling can now, if he’s smart and bold, solve all of our fiscal problems at a stroke. All he has to do is to divert all government spending into funding a colossal bet on this happening.

This would be such a deranged thing to do that the government would certainly lose its credit rating immediately. The Treasury would then cash in to the tune of several hundred billion pounds, wiping out the need for any more public borrowing.

Simples.