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...

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)
March 29, 2008 at 1:29 PM
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.
April 23, 2008 at 11:32 PM
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.
November 17, 2008 at 10:38 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the United States going back to 1901?

 “Make America Great Again” has been a Trump motto even during his first run for the presidency in 2015. It's not new (Reagan used it, for instance), but it does bring up a question: when was America great, according to Trump? Where does his backward look land in history? If you ask MAGA believers, you get many different answers and views on this. Trump himself has helpfully answered this at least to a degree. Trump told the New York Times when asked when America's power was greatest: "No if you really look at it, it was the turn of the century, that’s when we were a great, when we were really starting to go robust . But if you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship etc, etc.” At a rally in Phoenix, Trump said “President McKinley made our country very rich...
Read more

Trump is "phoning it in" and is no longer an acting president

  Donald Trump is no longer even doing his job as president. He spends 20% of his time golfing. He holds fundraisers for himself, using his official position to reward acolytes. He skips most of the daily intelligence briefings to keep him informed [https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946]. When asked questions about what his administration is doing he either says he doesn't know, or refers the questioner to another official. For instance, when asked whether he planned to send migrants to Libya, he responded “I don't know. You'll have to ask the Department of Homeland Security.” Even when asked about the most important aspect of being president, “[D]on’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Once again, Trump answered, “I don’t know.” [https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/-dont-know-problem-trump-leaning-new-favorite-phrase-rcna205546]  Trump generally skips the daily i...
Read more