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$60 Trillion of World Debt in One Visualization

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$60 Trillion of World Debt in One Visualization

$60 Trillion of World Debt in One Visualization

Two weeks ago, we published a post showing the world economy in one visualization. In the corresponding comments section, a user asked us if we could put together a similar visualization but instead honing in on world debt.

Today’s visualization breaks down $59.7 trillion of world debt by country, as well as highlighting each country’s debt-to-GDP ratio using colour. The data comes from the IMF and only covers public government debt. It excludes the debt of country’s citizens and businesses, as well as unfunded liabilities which are not yet technically incurred yet. All figures are based on USD.

The numbers that stand out the most, especially when comparing to the previous world economy graphic:

  • The United States constitutes 23.3% of the world economy but 29.1% of world debt. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 103.4% using IMF figures.
  • Japan makes up only 6.18% of total economic production, but has amounted 19.99% of global debt.
  • China, the world’s second largest economy (and largest by other measures), accounts for 13.9% of production. They only have 6.25% of world debt and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 39.4%.
  • 7 of the 15 countries with the most total debt are European. Together, excluding Russia, the European continent holds over 26% of total world debt.

Combining the debt of the United States, Japan, and Europe together accounts for 75% of total global debt.

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  • s dykes

    excellent graph interesting numbers. Now what about the opposite side of the story the profit. Are there any nations on the profit side? In theory the profit side should be the opposite of the debt side as the balance should be zero for the globe. If its negative i.e. there is more debt than profit then I would suggest that that amount of debt can never be repaid and will need removing from the books. The globe is a closed system, money has to be balanced.

    • James Creighton

      It is not nations that profit from debt – it is the “creditors” that benefit – the bankers – i.e. ultimately, the Rothschild dynasty. And remember that the vast majority of the “money” that is produced by the creditors for the borrowers is fiat – i.e. counterfeit – produced out of thin air – no gold backing – no silver backing – no property backing – STUFF ALL. This is a scam on a vast, VAST scale. BUT, thanks to the internet, an increasing number of citizens are discovering the scam – ….. – – – – – ropes and lamposts soon …….

      • Endgame

        “…thanks to the internet, an increasing number of citizens are discovering
        the scam – ….. – – – – – ropes and lamp osts soon …….”

        If only that were true. Don’t forget: the U.S.–and most major countries–are populated by a herd of sheep…not lions. Expect no changes and you won’t be disappointed.

        • Rollo10
        • Romm333

          This. The general population is nothing but an ignorant mass of sheep.

          Trying to explain the truth to this group is more difficult than teaching a cockroach calculus. It’s even dangerous: Not to many people can absorb the simple fact that most of everything they have been told by Government, Pharmaceuticals, the Oil Industry, the Banking cartels, the Food Industry, etc is complete fabricated lies to keep them slaves, uneducated and marching forward to their death after they have served their purpose.

          • Claude

            It’s the New World Order Agenda 21.
            The Trilateralists are in collusion with the Illuminati.
            Mark my words.

      • Ansel Lindner

        “It’s not the nation’s that profit from debt, it’s the creditors”
        That’s an astute point I think. A deeper point might be that most countries, Western countries at least, there is no difference between corporations /banks and the government; fascism and all that.
        “All figures are based on the USD” from the story is also telling. As the dollar and yen collapse the the US and Japanese percentage of debt will crash with them. Unless they all crash at the same time (except China’s addiction to gold).

        • Rollo10

          China and Russia have both been buying gold. Russia, before removing herself from the dollar system, used the ‘dollars’ received for oil to buy physical gold, whose price was being artificially suppressed by Fed Res, to protect the dollar. I also read on ‘Money Morning’ that the Fed Res had bailed the German bonds market out ‘TWICE’ in May, has prices soared.

          It’s one huge Ponzi scheme, and China hold the ‘trump’ cards, they have so much US debt, biggest in the world, dumping it would spark a collapse, but a bit at a time will help China position.

      • Rollo10

        I read a post that stated; on the MH370 flight was 4 of 5 copyright owners to a highly secretive new tracking device, due to the unfortunate demise of these men, Jacob Rothschild is now the sole copyright owner?
        Apparently the passenger manifests of all these ‘mishaps’ and the Amtrak rail disasters, reads like a John Le Carre spy novel, add in the 74+ Scientists and the 150+ Bankers who have been ‘suicided’ and we have a great film?
        MH17 had Glenn Thomas, a WHO scientist / spokesperson who was about to blow the whistle on their ‘fake Ebola’ scam, conducted by George Soros?
        http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/george-soros-ebola-and-the-death-of-who-spokesperson-glenn-thomas-in-the-ukraine/

      • TErne

        Just watch “The Money Masters” and you’ll see how the Rothschild (Red Shield) started the whole banking system.

        • stelios lazarou

          ‘The American Dream’ is as good too! Watch it free on ‘Top Documentary Films’

      • andrew John

        And don’t forget the cruelty of fractional reserve lending!

        • ejhr

          Fractional reserve lending is passe. It’s pure credit creation now for the banks operations.

          • andrew John

            Tell me more about this. I estimated FRL to equate to the same thing…debt!

          • ejhr

            FRL is now Credit Creation. there are 3 theories; Financial Intermediation, Fractional Reserve lending and Credit creation theory. Banks now lend none of their capital and the lent sum is credit created from thin air. They do not need reserves to generate credit. Banks only need borrowers to create credit. There is no law, statute or regulation which explicitly allows banks to create and allocate the money supply. It’s a fantastically good deal for banks!

    • Muhammad Abbass

      Usury ensures debt exists which can never be repaid. It’s elementary and why it is forbidden in Islam as a force which brings societies undone.

    • andrew John

      Not true. You see, it all begins with the securitizing of the U.S. birth certificate. So there is in effect a binary double negative. Meaning a worth of something that hasn’t been productive insofar as capital is concerned. For example, the remitting of a birth certificate, for trading…say one million dollars; well that’s a negative entry. Then the certificate is traded worldwide on the underground exchange; another negative. Then the certificate becomes a bond to be sold to the federal reserve, another negative, who sell it to the highest bidder, meaning the branches, another negative, and it repeats itself over and over again.

  • Endgame

    Look at Greece, then the U.S.
    Case closed….

  • Alexander

    Japanese and all the others took the money and gave them to the US

  • Spartus Rings

    If you own any size of land in the U.S. Instead of growing grass or flowers. Try growing vegetables, fruits like strawberries, apples, or some type of melons. You can’t make money or save any from grass and flowers. Grow some trees to use the wood to cook out on with real fire instead of using coal or grass. Just saying, in my opinion. Soil is more valuable than gold.

    • Tom Elliott

      How is that relevent to this article at all?

      • Spartus Rings

        With world debt. If you don’t understand how to lower your debt. Just keep buying and become part of the statistics. But if you really think about things. You can have more control over your life or what you spend. Just takes a little bit of your time. Unless you enjoy watching t.v. and never doing anything. Just pick up your phone for each commercial you see. But the U.S. could produce more than just a lawn and flowers. If it was relevent enough to do it.

        Soil is worht more than gold!! You cant grow food in gold.

        • Spartus Rings

          My grand parents and great grand parents used a lot of their land to farm or grow food on. Just saying. A lot has been lost over the years. America can produce more. We forgot how. It’s time to make a change!!

      • Spartus Rings

        I gotta find the book that tells me how much water it takes to add to gold for grow tomatoes and corn. Or how much money to plant. Just saying most people talk about profits or making things. Does it really matter? All we need to do is grow food. Anything more than that is making money for greedy politicians or corporations.

        The next time you go on a drive. See what people are down with the land. We create our own problems! !

        • Tom Elliott

          Sorry, you’re talking absolute drivel.

  • MstrJames

    balance has nothing to do with it. Modern money is debt. The game was rigged in 1913.
    IF 10 countries in group A each have a dollar, they loan the dollars to 10 socialists in group B. Then the socialists pour it down a rat hole to appease non working citizens. IT appears to balance on paper. But what if the socialists can’t or won’t ever pay back the money? Then group A has lost all of its savings. The profit of years of work. IT will send A’s economy into a tailspin. Then A wont have the money to support dead beat countries anymore. So they begin to starve. The people get mad. The leaders go on vacation with the central bankers and let everyone kill each other. In 10 years they begin the fiat theft game again. This time it will be different! They will use carbon credits instead of reserve notes. This is taught in colleges. The romans were one of the first to demonetize the currency. IT worked for millennia. Just don’t teach the unwashed masses the truth of the history of money. That is easy only allow government schools.
    The trick is bread and circuses. Focus on cecil the lion, Drink your beer, Chose between dempublicans or republicrats. Rinse repeat. (Whats buried in your back yard?)

    • Igor Dano

      A has looted and stolen all its wealth.
      I suppose you do not want to say, that A are Übermenschen and B are imbecils.

      • MstrJames

        Why yes, group B are imbecils.
        In America non-producers use crooked politicians (who pretend to be socialists) to rob the producers. If I work hard and raise tomatoes, then I sell them to you, the money is now mine. That does not make me a looter or stealer. Now I save up that money and I am forced to give it to Hillary Clinton and she loans it to socialist imbecils like Europe or asia, who have no intention to pay it back. It messes up my finances and I lose incentive to work out in the hot sun. Soon there will not be enough tomatoes to go around. This happens in every socialist country.
        So basically the poor (non-producers, druggers, lazy) use politics to rob the working man. Politicians like Hillary have $136,000,000 in her check account.
        In America the only fabulously wealthy people are progressive socialist like Obama and their corporate sponsors. Greed is not, wanting to keep your own money. Its wanting the government to take someone else’s and give it to you. Socialism is greed , disquised as compassion.
        The producers of America pay 2.2 trillion a year to the progressive voters. How much should we pay? 5 trillion? 10 trillion? 100 trillion? Is their no end to the wastefulness and greed of the socialists?

        • ejhr

          Socialism is alive and doing GREAT! thank you. It goes by the alternate name of neo-liberalism, – started by Thatcher and Reagan in about 1970-80. It’s what the 0.1% do, They make the nation pay them for their losses but they get to keep the profits,
          Socialise losses, privatise profits. Brilliant!

        • Dean Collins

          uhm you realize usa has more debt that anyone else…..so in your instance Hilary isn’t lending money to “socialists in Europe”….. YOU are the debtor.

    • flashorton

      nincompoop.

  • deMevesy

    Thanks Jeff, but who are the creditors within this game. I would like to see that pie chart too.

  • Tom J. Byrne

    Greece barely makes an impact on this chart.
    Ireland isn’t even on it. Are the bigger debtor nations picking on the less incumbered ones?

    • Ireland barely missed the cut and has 0.48%. Big considering its size!

      • Bospaddenstoel

        Going by size, Europe is way ahead of everyone. There are some 700+ million Europeans with 27% world debt on their heads, and 300+ million Americans with 29% world debt on their heads.

      • Abdul Samad

        Where’s ISRAEL?????

        I guess they don’t reveal any info

  • chadwarden

    Waste of a graph. Pointless and out of context. Completely irrelevant unless it was based against a country’s GDP and the actual ‘debt’ the country owed was actually defined

    • It’s all public national debt, as stated in article. Debt-to-GDP is based on colour.

  • andrew John

    Where’s Israel?

  • ejhr

    I hope people do understand Federal Government debt is the total of T-securities in the Reserve Bank.
    These are funds parked in the fed’s reserve accounts earning interest. They are not spent. They are savings accounts!
    That means it’s a measure of the nation’s wealth, not debt. The bigger the number, the more wealth.
    Don’t let yourself be mislead!

  • patriot1407

    nothing different..when the banksters wish to end the illusion and crash the economy they will…age old game

  • Héctor Cerón Figueroa

    So, where’s Africa? Did I miss something?

  • Shakespeare

    Would like to see annual interest payments vs some wealth measure

  • eeverett2 .

    The reason for this is that money is debt. We have a debt-money system in which almost all of our money is created by banks, out of thin air, when they make loans. Of course, the only thing that gives this number-debt-money any value is the work that we do to pay off our debts. The banks haven’t really given us anything but a supply of numbers. This is a scam that has been ripping the people of the world off for centuries, literally! It’s complicated, but Positive Money will give you a good idea about how it works
    .http://positivemoney.org/

  • William Hurley

    $60TT debt against >$77TT Global GDP doesn’t seem too bad. But then again, the ratios tell the tale of rich countries’ ability to borrow and spend their way to a decent QoL for their citizens while poorer countries can’t or if they can only at punitive rates.

  • Deanna Clark

    Spartus…you’re an agrarian romantic. It’s charming, but mostly an option for people with jobs to buy potting soil, buckets, fertilizer, and seeds. However, I agree about all these ridiculous yards and even more these lawn crews with illegals slaving in the heat because mowing your own lawn, at least here in the south, is an embarrassment.

    Many have followed your advice, only to go further in debt at Home Depot trying to fullfill the dream.

    I believe the most important practical thing to prepare for surviving is to make lots of friends with local little people and get ready to barter. However…as an old granny with a thrifty character I look around and all I see are lawn care trucks, SUV cars, and smart phones combined with endless griping about money. It’s hard to feel sorry for anyone paying $200 a month just for smart phones.

  • Antonis

    Magnificent job. I come from Greece which is supposed to be not only Europe’s but planet’s main debt issue. And probably is if you only take under consideration debt-to-GDP ratio. However, since I own a business and act like a debitor to most of my retailers, I would definitely be pissed if my 0,71% of debits to the market seems to be facing serious problems trying to brake even, but I would be shocked to know for example that my 20% of debits come from a “client” that makes an annual revenue equal to 60% of his debts to me like Japan. Not to mention my “biggest client” makes per year almost as much as he owns me like the U.S..

  • Germany has a dept to Greece from the war where Greece was forced to lend 476 million Reichsmarks at 10% Interest.
    Today the dept is about 11 billion and this is without the rest of the reparations for the war.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reparations_for_World_War_II#Greece

  • mrsing1

    If fiat currency was debt free then it would have no value, fiat currency is the problem not debt.

  • SADMAN

    The global debt (debit) is roughly equal the world GDP. It looks like one’s usure “soft snap” tantamount (credit).

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