The global debt is 305 trillion US $ in 2022, including debt by public and private debtors.[1] (A trillion is defined here as a million millions, or 1012.)
The global debt is growing fast. The growth rate was 28% in 2020.[2]
The total external debt owed by public and private debtors to creditors in other countries amounts to $76 trillion in 2019 according to the CIA world factbook[3] (a trillion is defined here as a million millions, or 1012).
Private debt% of GDP: This is the total domestic and external debt of the citizens and private companies as percent of the gross domestic product of the country.
External debt: This is the total debt of public and private debtors to foreign country banks and other foreign creditors. The amounts are in billion US $, calculated by the official exchange rate (a billion is defined here as a thousand millions, or 109).
Total debt, billion $: This is the sum of all debt, domestic and external, owed by public and private debtors in the country. The amounts are in billion US $, calculated by the official exchange rate.
Money supply, billion $: This is the supply of broad money, or money in circulation, of the country in its own currency. The amounts are in billion US $, calculated by the official exchange rate.
Disclaimer: Most values are from 2020 or 2021. Some values are a few years older. Values from different sources may not have been calculated in the same way. You cannot expect the table to be updated every year because some information is difficult to find and nobody has volunteered to keep the table up to date.
Data sources:
Public debt: IMF global debt database. Data for 2020.[4]
Private debt: IMF global debt database. Data for 2020.[4]
External debt: Data for Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Rep., Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, North and South Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA, Uruguay, European Union, and World are from the CIA world factbook with data from 2019.[3] All other data are from the World bank with data for 2020.[5]
GDP: Most data are from IMF World Economic Outlook Database, 2022.[6] Data for Afghanistan, Cuba, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine, and World are from the World bank with data for 2020 or 2021.[5] The data for North Korea are copied from Economy of North Korea.
The money supply data are from the World bank with data for 2020.[5]
There is more debt in the world than there is money in circulation.[7] The ratio of total debt to money supply ranges from 1.7 in Japan and Switzerland to 4.7 in Denmark and Iceland. The ratio for the world total is 1.8, according to the above table. A high ratio of public debt to money cannot be sustained, according to some models.[8] Economists prefer to look at the ratio of debt to the GDP. This ratio ranges from 1.5 in Latvia to 5.0 in Luxemburg. The world total is 3.5, according to the Institute of International Finance.[9]
The reason why there is more debt than money in circulation can be explained by the creation of credit money. When a bank issues a loan, it creates credit money and debt at the same time. The total debt in society and the total money in circulation are both increased by the same amount, which is the principal of the loan. By the time the loan has to be paid back, the debt has been increased by the compound interest while the credit money has not been increased. Most of the excess debt thus originates from compound interest of bank credit.[10][11]
It may seem impossible to repay all debt when there is more debt than money in the world, but it is theoretically possible to pay back all debt if the banks spend their income from interest payments to buy products and services so that the same money can circulate and be reused for more interest payments. However, critics fear that too much money is hoarded in the financial economy rather than spent in the real economy so that the total debt is spiraling up rather than being paid down.[12][13] In fact, the global debt has grown by approximately 6% per year during the period from 2015 to 2021.[14][9]
The fast growing debt is a consequence of the current financial system that leads to an unbalanced and uncontrolled growth of money and debt.[11][20] There is a distorted balance between public and private interests with insufficient democratic accountability, according to a Dutch government report.[19] A high level of debt makes the economy unstable with risks of economic crises.[10][11] The consequences of recurrent crises has been described as unfair because a disproportionate share of the benefits during a financial boom goes to the financial sector, while the general public bears the costs during the subsequent bust in the form of bankruptcies, bank bailouts, unemployment, and home evictions.[19] For example, farmers in India are being forced to sell their farm and land because of inescapable debt (see Farmers' suicides in India).[21]
Consequences of high external debt
External debt consists of government debt to foreign countries as well as private debt in foreign currencies. External debt is different from domestic debt because it affects the trade balance. Interest payments and inflation contribute negatively to the trade balance of the debtor country, while it provides a surplus to the creditor country or the country that issues the currency.[11] While the government can control the internal debt through its monetary policy and fiscal policy, it has fewer means to control the external debt.[11] A high external debt can lead to sovereign default, especially for poor countries with limited export.[10]
The growing level of unserviceable external debt in poor countries is producing a dependent relationship between debtor and creditor countries. Critics claim that this debt dependence is often used as leverage for a neocolonial relationship.[22][23] This view is opposed by development economists who find a beneficial effect of the inflow of foreign capital, whether in the form of direct investment or loans.[24]
Private banks earn rents from the circulation of money because most of the money in circulation originates from bank credit.[25] An imbalance results if money created in one country is used for circulation in another country. Currency substitution, i.e. payment in foreign currencies, is common in countries with a weak currency.[26] As far as the currency that circulates internationally originates from bank credit, it provides a seigniorage profit and an interest rent in the country where the money is created and a corresponding trade deficit for the country where the currency is circulating or stored.[27][28] This exacerbates the situation in poor countries, making them vulnerable to increasing external debt, inflation, and economic crises.[29]
Similar problems appear in countries that do not have their own currency. For example, the high external debt and financial crises of Greece, Italy, Spain, and several other Eurozone countries in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis was partially due to their lack of monetary autonomy and inability to control the money supply.[10]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world." Formed in 1944, started on December 27, 1945, at the Bretton Woods Conference, primarily by the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, it came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system. It now plays a central role in the management of balance of payments difficulties and international financial crises. Countries contribute funds to a pool through a quota system, from which countries experiencing balance of payments problems can borrow money. As of 2016, the fund had SDR 477 billion. The IMF is regarded as the global lender of last resort.
The economy of Moldova is an emerging upper-middle income economy, with a high Human Development Index. Moldova is a landlocked Eastern European country, bordered by Ukraine on the East and Romania to the West. It is a former Soviet republic and today a candidate member to the European Union.
The economy of the Republic of the Congo is a mixture of subsistence hunting and agriculture, an industrial sector based largely on petroleum extraction and support services. Government spending is characterized by budget problems and overstaffing. Petroleum has supplanted forestry as the mainstay of the economy, providing a major share of government revenues and exports. Nowadays the Republic of the Congo is increasingly converting natural gas to electricity rather than burning it, greatly improving energy prospects.
The free-market economy of Sri Lanka was worth $84 billion by nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 and $296.959 billion by purchasing power parity (PPP). The country had experienced an annual growth of 6.4 percent from 2003 to 2012, well above its regional peers. This growth was driven by the growth of non-tradable sectors, which the World Bank warned to be both unsustainable and unequitable. Growth has slowed since then. In 2019 with an income per capita of 13,620 PPP Dollars or 3,852 (2019) nominal US dollars, Sri Lanka was re-classified as a lower middle income nation with the population around 22 million (2021) by the World Bank from a previous upper middle income status.
In macroeconomics, the money supply refers to the total volume of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circulation and demand deposits. The central bank of a country may use a definition of what constitutes legal tender for its purposes.
Debt relief or debt cancellation is the partial or total forgiveness of debt, or the slowing or stopping of debt growth, owed by individuals, corporations, or nations.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1999 was rapid, and worries of a meltdown quickly subsided.
Monetary reform is any movement or theory that proposes a system of supplying money and financing the economy that is different from the current system.
The economies of Canada and the United States are similar because both are developed countries. While both countries feature in the top ten economies in the world in 2022, the U.S. is the largest economy in the world, with US$24.8 trillion, with Canada ranking ninth at US$2.2 trillion.
A country's gross external debt is the liabilities that are owed to nonresidents by residents. The debtors can be governments, corporations or citizens. External debt may be denominated in domestic or foreign currency. It includes amounts owed to private commercial banks, foreign governments, or international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
A country's gross government debt is the financial liabilities of the government sector. Changes in government debt over time reflect primarily borrowing due to past government deficits. A deficit occurs when a government's expenditures exceed revenues. Government debt may be owed to domestic residents, as well as to foreign residents. If owed to foreign residents, that quantity is included in the country's external debt.
Foreign exchange reserves are cash and other reserve assets such as gold held by a central bank or other monetary authority that are primarily available to balance payments of the country, influence the foreign exchange rate of its currency, and to maintain confidence in financial markets. Reserves are held in one or more reserve currencies, nowadays mostly the United States dollar and to a lesser extent the euro.
Money creation, or money issuance, is the process by which the money supply of a country, or of an economic or monetary region, is increased. In most modern economies, money creation is controlled by the central banks. Money issued by central banks is termed base money. Central banks can increase the quantity of base money directly, by engaging in open market operations. However, the majority of the money supply is created by the commercial banking system in the form of bank deposits. Bank loans issued by commercial banks that practice fractional reserve banking expands the quantity of broad money to more than the original amount of base money issued by the central bank.
The Convertibility plan was a plan by the Argentine Currency Board that pegged the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar between 1991 and 2002 in an attempt to eliminate hyperinflation and stimulate economic growth. While it initially met with considerable success, the board's actions ultimately failed. The peso was only pegged to the dollar until 2002.
The Latin American debt crisis was a financial crisis that originated in the early 1980s, often known as La Década Perdida, when Latin American countries reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning power, and they were not able to repay it.
Debt monetization or monetary financing is the practice of a government borrowing money from the central bank to finance public spending instead of selling bonds to private investors or raising taxes. The central banks who buy government debt, are essentially creating new money in the process to do so.
The net international investment position (NIIP) is the difference in the external financial assets and liabilities of a country. External debt of a country includes government debt and private debt. External assets publicly and privately held by a country's legal residents are also taken into account when calculating NIIP. Commodities and currencies tend to follow a cyclical pattern of significant valuation changes, which is also reflected in NIIP.
A sovereign default is the failure or refusal of the government of a sovereign state to pay back its debt in full when due. Cessation of due payments may either be accompanied by that government's formal declaration that it will not pay its debts (repudiation), or it may be unannounced. A credit rating agency will take into account in its gradings capital, interest, extraneous and procedural defaults, and failures to abide by the terms of bonds or other debt instruments.
The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion and debts of $145.8 trillion to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion {{refn|name=position|group=lower-alpha|See section Estimated financial position, Q1 2014 for calculations. GDP in Q1 decline was due to foreclosures and increased rates of household saving. There were significant declines in debt to GDP in each sector except the government, which ran large deficits to offset deleveraging or debt reduction in other sectors.
The external debt of India is the total debt the country owes to foreign creditors. The debtors can be the Union government, state governments, corporations or citizens of India. The debt includes money owed to private commercial banks, foreign governments, or international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
↑ Rodriguez, Alvaro (1993). "The Debt Money Ratio: What are the Limits?". In Baldassari, Mario; Mundell, Robert; McCallum, John (eds.). Debt, Deficit and Economic Performance. St. Martin's Press. pp.131–150.
↑ Turner, Adair (2016). Between debt and the devil: money, credit, and fixing global finance. Princeton University Press.
↑ Shiva, Vandana (2013). Making Peace with the Earth. Pluto Press. ISBN9780745333762.
↑ Charlton, Roger (2016). "External Debt, Economic Success and Economic Failure: State Autonomy, Africa and the NICs". In Riley, Stephen P. (ed.). The Politics of Global Debt. Springer. pp.168–188. ISBN978-1-349-22822-5.
↑ Bossone, Biagio (2021). "Commercial bank seigniorage and the macroeconomy". International Review of Financial Analysis. 76: 101775. doi:10.1016/j.irfa.2021.101775. S2CID235507092.
↑ Canzoneri, Matthew; Cumby, Robert; Diba, Behzad; López-Salido, David (2013). "Key currency status: An exorbitant privilege and an extraordinary risk". Journal of International Money and Finance. 37: 371–393. doi:10.1016/j.jimonfin.2013.06.006.
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