There was little right about the UK Budget last Wednesday, but much that was wrong.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling’s Budget speech supposed the economy would power back to higher than trend growth within a year or two, following an underestimated slump of -3.5pc this year. GDP will apparently oblige by growing at a boomtime rate of 3.5pc in 2011 and then ease back to trend at 2.75pc.

The IMF was quick to stamp all over the Budget predictions of growth, while most commentators rubbished the entire exercise as electioneering and “queering” the Tories pitch.

Public borrowing for this year and next is set to rise to £175 billion and £173bn — the highest in history and more than all years added together since 1694.

The Prime Minister and Chancellor clearly don’t believe they will be around to pick up the mess when all this fiction hits the fan.

There was almost a demob-happy mood in the PM’s demeanour as he laughed and chatterered through proceedings.

It does not bode well.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is forecasting that British GDP will contract 2.8 percent this year, worse than the U.S., the eurozone and Japan.

The IMF expects the U.S. economy to contract 1.6 percent; Japan to shrink 2.6 percent and the eurozone to decline 2 percent. Overall, the IMF expects the global economy to expand 0.5 percent, its weakest showing since the Second World War.

Economists at the IMF also estimated that bank losses may reach $2.2 trillion, almost twice the $1.4 trillion the organization predicted in October.

It warned that, “unless stronger financial strains and uncertainties are forcefully addressed, the pernicious feedback loop between real activity and financial markets will intensify, leading to even more toxic effects on global growth.”

In Britain, the bank bail-out is already projected to take national debt to 8 percent of GDP, and today the Institute Fiscal Studies warned that national debt levels are unlikely to return to the pre-crisis levels for more than 20 years.

If you live in Britain, the part-nationalisation of the banking sector will cost you at least £8,000 ($12,000) in taxes.

£500 billion ($750bn) is a conservative estimate of what taxpayers are paying for Gordon Brown’s plan to bail out the UK banking system. The three-part package includes committing up to £50 billion of taxpayer funds for a part-nationalization of Lloyds TSB, HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is now 57 per cent owned by the government.

Furthermore, the Bank of England will pump at least £200 billion into the money markets to encourage banks to lend to each other again – which should help lower the costs of new mortgages.

The Government is also making a further £250 billion available for banks over the next three years to guarantee medium-term debt which is of dubious quality. This is intended to help restore confidence and get banks lending to each other again.

£500 billion is equivalent to 4,000 new hospitals, or 16 new high speed rail links between London, the north of England and Scotland.

This is the price we are paying for poor regulation of the banks by the governmment in the first place.

Have you ever been confused by the jargon used by insiders to describe financial transactions? It’s easy to get the impression that some sellers go out of their way to confuse the issue.

Thisismoney.co.uk has a fairly comprehensive online A-Z guide to terms used in the financial services and banking sectors.

For example:

Credit Default Swap
A CDS or credit default swap is a contract issued by big City firms or funds that guarantees the holder will be covered if a particular company defaults on its debts. It is basically a type of insurance used by large investing institutions and reflects the cost of insuring their debts. It is used as one (controversial) way of measuring bank stability — the lower the figure, the stronger the bank.

Credit crunch
A credit crunch happens when banks hoard cash. If the supply of loans evaporates, the economic outlook quickly becomes bleak. The credit crunch that began in August 2007 was sparked by bad loans in America’s mortgage market — sub-prime borrowing. It can be measured by the level of Libor — the interbank lending rate.

Forex
The exchange rate is also known as the foreign-exchange rate, forex rate or FX rate. It is the rate between two currencies that specifies how much one currency is worth in terms of the other.

In the present financial climate it’s a good idea to scan through the list and update your knowledge of any unfamiliar terms, or those you hear frequently but wonder what they mean.

Equally, when a word or phrase suddenly arises, as “credit crunch” did on August 9 last year, this is a good place to go to check its meaning.

A-Z of Financial Terms and Jargon.