When Robert Stheeman became managing director of Britain's Debt Management Office (dmo) in 2003, annual sales of gilts, as government debt securities are known, had doubled to £50 billion in a year. The fiscal devastation wrought more recently by the credit crunch and recession have thrown those once eyebrow-raising figures into the shade. This year even in July, when its coffers are normally full, the Treasury came up £8 billion short. In the first five months of the financial year 2009-10, the dmo has sold £83 billion of gilts, and it needs to offload another £137 billion before the year ends (see chart on next page).
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