Just for reference.
How much will coronavirus cost the UK?
We won't know how big the final bill will be until after the crisis is over. But the government will certainly have to borrow enormous amounts of money because it is spending more than it is taking in from tax.
On 25 November, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which keeps tabs on government spending, estimated that borrowing would be £394bn for the current financial year (April 2020 to April 2021).
That's the highest figure ever seen outside wartime.
The government borrows money by selling bonds.
A bond is a promise to make payments to whoever holds it on certain dates. There is a large payment on the final date - in effect, the repayment.
Interest is also paid to whoever owns the bond in the meantime. So it's basically an interest-paying "IOU".
The buyers of these bonds, or "gilts", are mainly financial institutions, like pension funds, investment funds, banks and insurance companies.
Private savers also buy some.
The Rothschild family is a wealthy Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, who established his banking business in the 1760s.
