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World Debt

Orphia Nay

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Orphia Nay
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A friend posted this on Facebook:

Debt_zps20211a72.jpg


It was from a page called "The Other 98%".

Surely there's a non-occutard explanation for this.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Surely there's a non-occutard explanation for this.
Click to expand...

Explanation for what?

According to the Wall Street Journal, that number is wrong. Care to guess the real number?



http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/05/11/number-of-the-week-total-world-debt-load-at-313-of-gdp/

$223.3 trillion
 
Orphia Nay said:
Do the figures take into account the countries that are in surplus?
Click to expand...

If you are referring to psionl0's link, yes. If you look carefully you will notice that there are creditor nations as well as debtor nations.

For every debt, there is necessarily a creditor.
 
My uninformed guess is that there are various interpretations of the word "debt" in this field.

Japan is top creditor nation in psion's list, yet has the world's worst "public debt to GDP ratio" (wiki linky ).

I wish I understood this stuff ;)
 
In the case of UK sovereign debt, some of it is owed to me because I own some government bonds. One of the reasons why people have been less worried about Italy than they might is that a larger than typical portion of Italian government debt is owned by the Italian people so that Italy is less exposed to the international money markets than it might otherwise be.
 
GlennB said:
My uninformed guess is that there are various interpretations of the word "debt" in this field.

Japan is top creditor nation in psion's list, yet has the world's worst "public debt to GDP ratio" (wiki linky ).

I wish I understood this stuff ;)
Click to expand...
There's a very informative video on youtube that explains this.
 
lomiller said:
These numbers are better thought of as “which countries are investing in who”. The US is seen as a good place to invest so a lot of investment capital flows into the US, this shows up as “borrowing” Japan hasn’t had a lot of growth in the last couple decades so investment dollars have flowed outwards.
Click to expand...

This is a much more useful list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_received_FDI

Or this one:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator...pi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc

Focusing on a single economic indicator is usually a good way to arrive at an unsupportable conclusion. Some indicators, such as consumer or business confidence, are difficult to define in a universally applicable context, too. There's no way at all to predict or quantify the appearance of someone like Argentina's Fernandez to seize the reins of the economy and promptly drive it off the nearest cliff.
 
The guy holding the sign is obviously an idiot. I have no doubt he thinks the world is in debt to the Jews or the Illuminati or some other shadowy organization.

"The World" isn't in debt to anyone, or any thing. Various countries are in debt to various other countries.
 
What, nobody's gonna say it? Sigh, fine!
Ahem,



So why don't we just put this on some World Credit Card?

What?!?

:duck:
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
The guy holding the sign is obviously an idiot. I have no doubt he thinks the world is in debt to the Jews or the Illuminati or some other shadowy organization.

"The World" isn't in debt to anyone, or any thing. Various countries are in debt to various other countries.
Click to expand...

And also people, in 2011, 57% of Italian national debt was owned by the Italian people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/b...ge-on-italian-savers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In theory a country could have a large government debt but no foreign debt at all.
 
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