Tuesday, October 9, 2007

A nice graph showing national debt/surplus worldwide

http://itulip.com/dollardown1currentaccount.htm

So China and Russia, the "communist" countries, have a huge surplus, while the UK and the US have the worst national debts. Kinda weird, huh?
I just can't get excited about being the largest debtor nation in the world. When I was young I was excited about the US being the leader in innovation, in space exploration, in democracy, in freedom. But now the things available to get excited about just aren't as much fun...

3 comments:

Alex Merrick said...

Except that is annual trade deficit, not budget. Look on the last page of the Economist if you want more accurate/understandable data. Note ALL the world's large economies either have large surpluses (or huge deficits)

Anonymous said...

Technically this is trade debt - owed to other countries by virtue of buying and selling between nations. That is different from the national debt which is what is borrowed to run the government. That story is even worse for the USA as the national debt is over 9 trillion dollars.

But nice graph and link to a very good website - thanks.

Anonymous said...

Nice find, but you should look at debt / GDP for a more accurate picture. Check out: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_deb_ext_pergdp-economy-debt-external-per-gdp. The U.S. is #51 on that list.