Comparing Public Debts

September 29, 2008

Comments

And while we’re on the subject of public debt it might be entertaining to compare the public debts and GDP’s of various OECD countries:

Country	GDP ($T)	Public debt ($T)	Percent
France	1.87	1.21	64.7%
Germany	2.59	1.93	63.8%
Italy	1.8	1.9	105.3%
Japan	4.28	7.53	176%
United Kingdom	2.77	.864	31.2%
United States	13.81	9.67	70%

Source: CIA.gov

Brett

September 29, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Poor Japan, with national debt at nearly 200% of the GDP. It really hurts them; they can’t do anything that might raise interest rates, otherwise the government will probably collapse under the fiscal burden of servicing the loans.
Steve Plunk

September 29, 2008 at 1:17 pm

I would like to see publicly owned assets thrown into that chart. The United States government owns huge amounts of acreage and their resources. I also wonder if this chart includes the newly acquired debts of Fannie and Freddie (I assume it does). If we are going to include those debts should we not include the assets that match them?

There is a tangible difference between debt that is secured by assets and debt that has no associated assets. So while the chart is interesting it is incomplete enough to not be useful and perhaps even misleading.
bob in fla

September 29, 2008 at 10:15 pm

Some of these figures appear to be out of date. Our new debt ceiling was just raised to $11.315T to reflect the current (defeated) bailout. My guess is the Fannie, Freddy, & AIG bailouts are not included in the figure shown.