Compare the UK manufacturing sector to the Spanish. The only reason that we are not (yet) in much worse straights than Spain and Italy is because we are the pla

Compare the UK manufacturing sector to the Spanish. The only reason that we are not (yet) in much worse straights than Spain and Italy is because we are the place to route the money through. On paper the UK has the worst economic exposure in the OECD and produces very little indeed. We are little more than a service economy for banking at this point, and UK banking has the lion's share of our total debt, dwarfing what is owed by the public sector. Luckily we are considered the stable place, so people continue to put their money here, but I suspect that is more of a confidence trick than anything else.