{"id":42972,"date":"2019-01-20T07:15:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-20T12:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42972"},"modified":"2019-01-20T07:15:08","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T12:15:08","slug":"visualizing-the-snowball-of-global-government-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42972","title":{"rendered":"Visualizing The Snowball Of Global Government Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Visualizing The Snowball Of Global Government Debt<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Over the last five years, markets have pushed concerns about debt under the rug.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But, while economic growth and record-low interest rates have made it easy to service existing government debt, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins points out<\/a> that it\u2019s also created a situation where government debt has grown in to over\u00a0$63 trillion<\/a>\u00a0in absolute terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The global economic tide can change fast,<\/strong> and in the event of a recession or rapidly rising interest rates, debt levels could come back into the spotlight very quickly.<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE DEBT SNOWBALL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s visualization comes to us from\u00a0HowMuch.net<\/a>\u00a0and it rolls the world\u2019s countries into a \u201csnowball\u201d of government debt, colored and arranged by debt-to-GDP ratios<\/strong>. The data itself comes from the IMF\u2019s most recent October 2018 update.<\/p>\n

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Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The structure of the visualization is apt, because debt can accumulate in an unsustainable way if governments are not proactive. This situation can create a vicious cycle, where mounting debt can start hampering growth, making the debt ultimately harder to pay off.<\/p>\n

Here are the countries with the most debt on the books:<\/p>\n

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Note: Small economies (GDP under $10 billion) are excluded in this table, such as Cabo Verde and Barbados<\/em><\/p>\n

Japan and Greece are the most indebted countries in the world, with debt-to-GDP ratios of 237.6% and 181.8% respectively. Meanwhile, the United States sits in the #8 spot with a 105.2% ratio, and recent Treasury estimates putting the national debt at\u00a0$22 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

LIGHT SNOW<\/h2>\n

On the opposite spectrum, here are the 10 jurisdictions that have incurred less debt relative to the size of their economies:<\/p>\n

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Note: Small economies (GDP under $10 billion) are excluded in this table, such as Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands<\/em><\/p>\n

Macao and Hong Kong \u2013 both special administrative regions (SARs) in China \u2013 have virtually zero debt on the books, while the official country with the lowest debt is Brunei (2.8%).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Visualizing The Snowball Of Global Government Debt Over the last five years, markets have pushed concerns about debt under the rug. But, while economic growth and record-low interest rates have made it easy to service existing government debt, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins points out that it\u2019s also created a situation where government debt has grown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,380,431,24045,12504,4318],"class_list":["post-42972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-government-debt","tag-interest-rates","tag-jef-desjardins","tag-visual-capitalist","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42973,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42972\/revisions\/42973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}