Tuesday, November 04, 2008

U.S. Federal Government Debt vs. Rest of World

debt-gdp-vs-world.gif (8996 bytes)Above is a dramatic look at the U.S. federal government debt.

This chart takes the present value of all US Federal Government debt obligations, including unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations, which at end of 2007 totaled $62.6 Trillion (upper red bar on chart)
[Data source -http://fms.treas.gov/fr/07frusg/07frusg.pdf]

- - And compares that $62.6 Trillion in debt to U.S. GDP, plus to the rest of World's government debt of about $18 trillion (and rest of world's GDP).

Restated: U.S. government debt of $62.6 trillion is 3 1/2 times larger than the sum of the debts of all governments in the world ($18 trillion).

--Yet, the U.S. economy (GDP) is 68% smaller than the rest of the world. (Compare the black bars on this chart)

Resource

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

BTW, the GDP of the entire world is roughly $55 trillion.

This huge amount is dwarfed by speculative lending in the derivatives markets of ten times that amount--$525-$550 trillion.