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GDP vs National Debt by Country

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national-debt


The national debt of countries represents how much money the government of that country owes. Like a household budget, national debt gets larger when a government spends more than it takes in. This can continue for years, or even decades. This budget deficit is the total amount of this debt that has grown over time, with interest charged adding significantly to the amount owed by the government.

The amount owed varies greatly with the amount of money a country generates, its population and how much its government spends. In Germany, the national debt is $1.79 trillion. This represents 62.6 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product, or GDP. In The U.K. the national debt is $42.2 trillion. This is 47.2 percent of the GDP of the U.K.

In Russia, the national debt is $151.3 billion. This is 6.8 percent of the Russian GDP. Italy owes a national debt of $1.89 trillion, or 103.7 percent of the Italian GDP. The national debt of France is $1.40 trillion. This is 67 percent of France’s GDP.

One of the highest levels of national debt relative to the country’s GDP can be found in Japan. The Japanese national debt is $7.47 trillion. This is 170.4 percent of the Japanese GDP. India has a national debt of $2.55 trillion. This debt is 78 percent of the GDP of India. Zimbabwe has a national debt of $472.51 billion. This level of national debt is 241.2 percent of Zimbabwe’s GDP.

In the Americas, The United States has a national debt of 8.68 trillion. In the U.S., this is 60.8 percent of the American GDP. The Canadian national debt is $814.26 billion. In Canada, the national debt is 62.3 percent of the GDP. In South America, Argentina has a national debt of $293.56 billion. The Argentinean national debt is 51 percent of the GDP of Argentina.

The gross domestic product of a country is the market value of all of the products and services that a country produces in one year. This includes spending that is done by the citizens of the country and by the government of that country. It includes the value of items produced within the county and exported elsewhere, but it does not include the value of any imported items. The GDP is the primary way to calculate the size and status of the economy of a country as a whole. It is calculated quarterly as well as yearly.

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  • Drowning In Debt
    As of 2/12/2010 the U.S. debt ceiling has been raised to $14.3 Trillion, so that will soon enough be what our actual debt is. Less than 10 years ago it was under $6 trillion, so we've been on an extremely dangerous spending path since then. This country is in serious trouble unless voters start demanding fiscal responsibility from all politicians and from ourselves, meaning we need to start paying enough taxes to cover spending. If you don't like the current level of spending, tell your representatives to STOP IT.
  • Nick
    These are based on a country's external debt, not just goverment debt. According to the CIA World Factbook--

    This entry gives the total public and private debt owed to nonresidents repayable in foreign currency, goods, or services.
  • peter
    What is going on here? On other web search, it showed India had nation debt of about 165billian and trouble was in amerecia where national debt was 11 trillian.
  • Fizmo
    These are statistics a couple of years ago. Just check the debt of the USA. It says it's 8,68 trillion but at the moment it's around 12 trillion. The debt rate in the UK is 68,8% and is going to 80% within 3-5 years because of the huge deficit.
  • Rob
    Dan - The Canadian federal debt is at 482, but here they account for the provincial debt as well.
  • Alex
    I know this has nothing to do with illinois, but I am sending you this just to let you know.


    Congress passed an act in 1961 which allows people to donate to the bureau of national debt. You can donate any amount of money to them.


    the adress is:
    Department of public debt
    P.O Box 2188
    Parkersburg,WV 260106-2188

    If you don't want to do the above then:
    Can you please go to http://defeatthedebt.com/help-us/ and sign their petition? Also can you donate some money to them too? they are going to march around the white house to convince the president to pay down the debt.

    You can do either both or none of the above listed.

    Spread the word!



    Send me your regards,



    Thanks.
  • jesus
    These figures are not accurate for the following reasons:
    - national debt should include future obligations of medicare and social security (which for the US is over 20 trillion)
    - These debt figures do not take into account debts held at the state/provincial and municipal levels.

    An accurate reading of US debt, for example, that included social security & medicare obligations and most importantly government debt at ALL levels of government, the debt is up past 40 or 50 trillion. Good luck with that!
  • Elias Mouawad
    Search for "CIA DEBT LIE"

    the real ratio is 90%
  • Jadak Deuxblade
    GDP is actually measured the same in every country although information is very spotty and may be part of an educated conjecture in most of the un-industrialized states (Namibia, Peru, basically all those counties not in North America, Europe, or Japan). I would like to point out to Ryan that, while the government *does* spend a lot, if it spent too much it would crowd out private investment and actually end up contracting GDP by causing a recession. I also just looked up the percentage of debt to GDP in the CIA world factbook and it gave me 60.8%, in line with what this graphic is giving us. All in all, I believe it's important for Americans like myself to see this comparison and know that we are not the worst off, in the end what's important is that a country keeps up an image of reliability to the world and investors will keep buying bonds of that country's debt regardless of how much it already owes (just don't turn out to be another Argentina).
  • Liz in NZ
    What's going on is that real value is being transmorified into debt by the monetary system. The System and Governments and the Debt and the Monetary System are all legal fictions of course. We have to step back from legal fictions to discover the reality that there is no debt and the only real thing that means anything is Human Beings and their actions.
    Crazy thing is that Human Beings are killing and hurting and living in 'poverty' every day in defence of these legal fictions.
  • Jay
    http://www.canadianeconomy.gc.ca/english/economy/

    Source is the Canadian Government.

    457 billion dollars as of 2008.

    So what's going on here?
  • Willem
    source CIA factbook.

    Are those the same guys that gave us the 'facts' about Saddam Hussain's WMD programme?

    Or are they the same guys that choose to ignore the Geneva convention and tortured random Afghanies?
  • TurnyBright
    That's the point of the graphic, that the ability of a country to service its debt has little/nothing to do with that country's actual production possibility frontier. It is simply a shifty method of allocating any wealth/capital in that country to work for the "creditors" instead of the citizenry.

    Notice that none of those countries show a positive balance, at best they are servicing their debt at <5% their GDP. Who is receiving the payments made in service to these debts?
  • Kevin
    The debts seems off at least for the US. Every search I do for US National debt comes out to a little under 12 trillion.

    Even the CIA factbook, which apparently this website is getting its information, has the US debt at 12.25 trillion. The factbook also says the GDP is 14.29 GDP, for a debt/GDP of 85% instead of 60%.

    If you are going to forge your data, please dont cite a source thats very easy to look up to see that you are simply bullshitting people.
  • Dave
    As others have pointed out, the numbers in this chart are way off so don't put any stock in it.
  • Dan
    That puts us at 37%. Not bad compared to the rest of G8.
  • Dan
    Your listed value for Canada is 332 billion higher than our national debt clock says.

    We're actually at 482 billion total.

    We were at 700 billion-ish back in 1998 or thereabouts I think.
  • ryan
    No, GDP is not an accurate measurement of production. If it was then the US would have a much lower GDP. Government spending and private consumption is used to calculate GDP. So the more money the government spends the higher your GDP. And since the US spends billions, now trillions, more than it has I think GDP becomes misleading.
  • CorkyAgain
    Is GDP calculated the same way in all these countries? And is it really an accurate measurement of the country's production and thus of its ability to retire its debt?
  • Micah
    Less painful way out of this debt is to grow the economy. It's easier to do now than it was after World War 2 when our debt was over 100 % of GDP. So, stop worrying and work harder and think about how we can grow our economy and therefore our GDP. It's simple math.
  • MissPolitico
    The collapse of the dollar is coming. All fiat currencies will follow. The only way to fix this is to stop ALL social programs and payments and increase taxes on everyone. The people of the US will NEVER vote for someone to do both of those things to fix the problem. No one will sacrifice the programs they paid into or need and no one will want to pay more in income taxes - so basically we are all hosed. Buy Gold, Silver, and othe precious metals. The dollar is toast - lost 11% in 3 months - think about that people - don't put your head in the sand.

    This decline is somewhat intentional. The US will owe less to other countries if the dollar value continues to decline - so it's not as if they (government, FED) want the dollar to gain in value - it's doesn't benefit them. They are robbing us of our savings as they are our liberty - WAKE UP!
  • Deepak
    Right - Lets talk India. The data looks expontial
  • Mike
    Canada's debt vs GDP ratio is 28.6% with estimates of 32.1% in the coming year.

    Canada's total public dept is 462.9 Billion at this point.

    Not sure were you got your numbers from but this is what I found on various sites
  • i think !! Indonesia is in the red !!
    heehee..
  • D. Young
    The U.S. figure does not include unfunded liabilities for social security, medicare, etc... That is money the government has taken from workers and promised to pay back (in the social security statements we get) but is not counted here because it is not a conventional loan. Including unfunded liabilities, our debt is closer to $53 trillion, or 360% of GDP (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_publ... ).
  • cam
    The #'s are the % of total GDP. The US has a much larger economy and therefor a much larger GDP, so 8 trillion is 60% where as in Canada 60% of the GDP is only around a tenth of that.
  • This doesn't show net debt, so it's not that useful. Norway has no net debt:

    http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tp...
  • DLud
    Andre - Canada's GDP is less than 10% of the US's, hence even though they have a smaller dept in absolute amounts (about 10%) as a percentage of their GDP it is larger.

    Andy - in order to finance deficit spending governments issue interest bearing bonds (in the US they're called treasury bills). These are purchased by banks, individuals, companies, etc and traded on the open market.
  • Kevin
    Andre S., correct me if I am wrong but, the percentage is of our g.d.p. gross domestic production. The U.S. has a much higher gdp. So their $ amount would be much higher.
  • Cristian
    So, more is better or less is better?
  • YaÅŸar T.
    There is an error with Zimbabwe. Since its GDP is 1.959 Bn USD according to CIA Factbook, its debt should be around 4.725 bn USD not 472.51 bn USD. 472.51 bn USD is too much for a country with that size. Nobody lends them that much ;)
  • Andy
    I only have one question. Where does this money that the countries owe come from? Someone has to actuall have it to lend it to someone else.
  • US is going to default on this debt. Will have to print money. But not sure when. First due to deleveraging, deflation will run its course and once we realize the debt is not possible to pay at current income levels, we will crank up the printing machine really hard.

    Turkey used to be upside down, how come no debt now? US should learn something.
  • why is Italy in so much debt?
  • chefdujour
    It's because of socialism.
  • Mbantu
    FAAAAKKKEE
  • Makes me thirsty. Get kings cup cards at drinkingdecks.com
  • Tim
    What about debt as a percentage of national budget?
  • joe blow
    so?
  • Dave
    The estimated US Debt is at 11.4 Trillion as of June 09 2009

    Real time debt clock with stats
    http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
  • Person Man
    This really makes our debt look not all that bad.
  • Just an FYI, in your image above you have Canada's National debt as being a total representation of 62.3% vs. US as being 60.8%, however, the US' dollar amount is $8.68 TRILLION, whereas Canada is at 814.26 BILLION. I'm assuming Canada's should say TRILLION if they indeed have a higher debt then the US.
  • hmmmm... the richer you are the more debt you should have?

    debt is probably not a bad thing in this type of economy we have.
  • Uncle B
    Will the astounding devaluation of the U.S. dollar, happening as we speak, in effect, erase or at least 'belittle' debt fixed to paper, making it more manageable, payable? Zimbabweans can pay one million dollar debts with one single paper bill today. I await the days of $100,000.00 bills in the U.S. being equal to a months work, and former McMansion mortgages being paid with waitresses weekly tips! Mindbending inflation is just around the corner, along with very high oil prices, the only losers appear to be the lenders, who will get back only what is fixed and written on debt documents, not adjusted for the ball-busting inflation and devaluation of the Yankee sawbuck! China is even stepping back from the fray, and no longer buying up dollars with loans to the U.S., and have even opted out of international trade with dollars, setting up instead a system in Asia using 'Yuan' Do the shysters, banksters, swindlers and shylocks in the U.S. realize this? You bet they do and have converted to 'Yuan' using the Shanghai stock exchange to buy into China! America, you folks are one toke over the line and you don't even realize it!
  • It is fair to say that the optimum ratio is somewhere between 40 and 60 percent and I expect that Italy and Japan might be able to reach that level as their economies recover, but the ratio for China is truly scary.
  • Anonymous
    the optimum ratio is to have NO DEBT at all
  • JPS
    If everyone is in debt, then where is the actual money?
  • hahahhaha
    Wy.Yyk0o0p P0$dR@w!aAa! < 333
  • Egg5
    this chart looks fishy..
    Germanys GDP 2008 was 3.667 trillion Dollar
    62 percent of that are 2.27 trillion and not 1.7
  • Przybyl
    Co z tÄ… PolskÄ…??
  • Dan
    This ain't right. Canada's debt is 467 billion, the US is over 11.3 trillion.
  • szary
    OK then... if so many countries have so big debts... who borrowed them so much money? I don't get it.
  • TJ
    Is it possible to state the source of this data? I am very curious to know if all major money making countries are in debt who is giving them these loans?
  • stupid poopy poop
    i am a llama
  • Boy, I can't wait for the stock market to recover so we can get rid of all that debt! Oh, wait. We'll still be in massive debt to China even after that happens. Assuming it will. Read this post on mindyourpolitics and the article link about the market recovery. Financial Analysts
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