Talk:List of countries by external debt

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surely the uk and the us are the wrong way around? external debt = external obligations, right? tried to check the world factbook but it's down at the moment. will try again later.


Contents

[edit] Debt as Percentage of GDP

It would be nice and more informative if the debt for that year, was also linked with the percentage of debt for that year (maybe add a new column?). This would show better statistics, and America will not rank first anymore of debt as percentage of GDP. In fact, both Japan and Italy are higher than the US, and over 100% debt of their own GDP. --Waqas1987 23:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree -- I'll try doing this when I have time. Mathwhiz 29 (talk) 04:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] E.U.?

Where is the E.U.? If the Europeans demand on being counted on lists they should be counted on ALL lists, not just positive ones. And in the case of external debt they would rank #1. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.63.18.208 (talk • contribs)

The EU is nowhere to be found since this is a list of nations. The EU is not a nation, but a trade association. Valentinian T / C 10:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Then why is counted on the GDP list? I personally hate the E.U. but if "Europeans" demand to be listed on positive thing I do not see any problem with listing them on negative things like external debt, which the E.U. would undoubtedly be ranked as #1.

Hmm, in official Danish statistics, an EU-25 average is normally shown as well, simply for comparative purposes. Could the same be the case here? Valentinian T / C 13:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


If you wanted EU external debt, I guess you would have to subtract the debt which is held by other EU member states amongst each other....doing a simple 'adding the EU countries together' would nto give you a correct figure. 62.56.76.22 20:27, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

EU supporters will not want to see EU on the list cause it is massive and embarassing for them, in fact more than 30 trillion US dollar. I will add up and post it here. --58.107.15.25 (talk) 06:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

EU Countries External Debt as of 30 June 2007 According to CIA World Fact Book --Aryanbeauty (talk) 07:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC) 1 United Kingdom $10,450,000,000,000 2 Germany $4,489,000,000,000 3 France $4,396,000,000,000 4 Italy $2,345,000,000,000 5 Netherlands $2,277,000,000,000 6 Spain $2,047,000,000,000 7 Ireland $1,841,000,000,000 8 Belgium $1,313,000,000,000 9 Austria $752,500,000,000 10 Sweden $598,200,000,000 11 Denmark $492,600,000,000 12 Portugal $415,500,000,000 13 Greece $371,500,000,000 14 Finland $271,200,000,000 15 Poland $187,800,000,000 16 Hungary $142,900,000,000 17 Romania $85,860,000,000 18 Czech Republic $61,740,000,000 19 Slovenia $40,420,000,000 20 Slovakia $36,660,000,000 21 Latvia $29,850,000,000 22 Bulgaria $29,290,000,000 23 Cyprus $26,120,000,000 24 Lithuania $22,700,000,000 25 Estonia $20,240,000,000 26 Malta $188,800,000 27 Luxembourg $ NA

       Total               $32,743,268,800,000


There is a problem with the EU debt listing. You have added up the external debt of individual EU countries and placed that as the total EU external debt. However, we do not know how much of the external debt of the individual EU countries is owed to other EU countries. That debt would actually be internal EU debt as it would be owed to other countries that are inside of the EU. External EU debt is debt that is owed to non-EU countries. There may very well be a site estimating how much debt that EU countries owe to non-EU countries, but the CIA World Factbook site apparently does not provide that number. Cmrdm (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

If thats the case then how do you calculate the world's external Debt , does the world owes money to other Planet? They calculate by adding up the debt of individual countries and thats exactly what the EU countries' external debt is, by adding up th external debt of each EU countries. --Aryanbeauty (talk) 08:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The world is not an economic bloc. The EU is. In order to have a meaningful figure on external debt, we need to know how much money EU countries owe to non-EU countries. Adding up the external debt of individual EU countries does not give us that exact figure, because some of that money is owed to other EU countries, making it internal EU debt, not external. Cmrdm (talk) 21:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Not up to date

This page is massively out of date, as it stands US external debt stands at over US$ 8 trillion. The introduction is also misleading, "as of 2005"... No. --JDnCoke 18:01, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The "October 05", refers to date when the "The World Factbook" data is extracted, not the external debt data. I changed the sentence to clarify it, thks for pointing it out. If you have updated data on the US external debt, with reference, please update it the page. That's what the columns "Date of Information" and "Source" are for. --Vsion 22:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


LOL these Eurotrash are so quick to update US debt into 12 trillion but they just left alone EU countries cause they are embarassingly high. For Example 2007 figure of UK debt is $ 10 trillion and UK only has about 2.6 trillion GDP. ha ha --58.107.15.25 (talk) 02:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Canadian Debt

Why is the value of Canada's external debt so low comparatively, if it's ranked fourth? I'm also fairly certain that the Canadian government owes more money than a "mere" 16 billion dollars... can somebody validate the source? 142.151.187.206 17:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

(Edit: I also find it hard to believe that a nation's debt can go from about 500 billion dollars to 16 billion in just one year) 142.151.187.206 17:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I provided a link to the department of finance's website in the Canada listing. There is probably no better source than that. Click on the little "3" next to the Department of Finance in the "Source" Column. Secondly, Canada's total debt hit 650 billion but its foreign debt was never really high. That was a mistake on the CIA World Factbook's part. Martin-C 17:49, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, successive governments in Canada have made paying off the foreign debt a national priority. They have done an amazing job of it too.
Wikipedia is kind of ignorant, economically. Actually it's completely ignorant, there is no correlation between debt and standard of living or GDP. Debt only becomes a problem when countries cannot pay it off, and capital investments flee, like Argentina in 2001. Japan has an amazingly high external debt, last I saw their citizens weren't starving. --Rotten 04:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Rankings of debt (be it net or gross, total, external or internal) are indicators commonly used by economists, e.g. in evaluating a country's dependence on other nations. Whether debt it is a problem or not is a political issue which is outside of the scope of this project. Valentinian T / C 07:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand why it is ranked 4th. Robertbrockway 06:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
It's not ranked 4th in reality. It used to be ranked 4th as based on the incorrect information from the World Factbook. The figure previously quoted was close to Canada's total debt, not its foreign debt. I have been trying to figure out a way to move Canada to the appropriate location without having to renumber the entire list. If anyone has an easy way to do this, please let me know. Martin-C 16:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I've fixed it (and double checked the information, it is 16.3 bill. Canadian dollars = 14 bill. US dollars.) The table was very misleading regarding my country, Denmark, as well. It has been a national priority to repay our debt, and the Danish external debts will be repaid sometime during 2007. I've fixed both entries. --Valentinian 13:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
This is NOT a list of government debt! It is a list of total external debt. Try to understand this before you make changes. What the Canadian or Danish govenments do is irrelevant. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.74.125.217 (talk) 06:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC).
No it isn't and I am aware of that difference, thank you. The problem was that the World Fact Book relied on material several years old. Within that time frame, the total external debt of Denmark had fallen from c. 42 % to 28 %, and the cut in government debt was responsible for this drop. That was the problem. Fortunately, the World Fact Book is now beginning to update its entries more often, but for two consecutive years Denmark's total external debt has dropped 6-7 points / year. Valentinian T / C 07:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Germany

Where is Germany?

I've added a note that the figure is missing. --Valentinian 13:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Netherlands

Where are the Netherlands?

I've added a note that the figure is missing. --Valentinian 13:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] United Kingdom

Where is the United Kingdom? Average Earthman 11:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I've added it. (I wonder how many countries are actually missing here???) --Valentinian 10:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
why is the UK figure SO high? Is there a reason? Can someone explain or find out?143.167.200.64 08:42, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
See paragraph “External sustainability” in this doc from IMF. "The U.K.’s role as an international financial center implies large gross external assets and liabilities…". See also: Economy of the United Kingdom & Economic history of Britain.--Van helsing 09:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Really still confused about this... 557 billion pounds is only just above 1 trillion dollars. 128.237.228.142 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Not a good article. It is making the assumption that all government debt is held external to the country. Clearly false, since most gilts will be held by pension funds in the UK

[edit] Tokelau

Why are they on this list as they're a dependent territory, not an independent nation? Joffeloff 19:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

According to the article on Tokelau, the area is not independent. --Valentinian (talk) 19:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That's what I mean. It's a dependent territory of New Zealand - New Zealand is already listed here, and surely Tokelau's economy is a matter handled by the NZ government? Joffeloff 23:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't know why they were added originally. Probably simply because many such territories have a separate entry in the World Fact Book. I don't think there is any deeper reason behind it. --Valentinian (talk) 08:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm gonna go ahead and remove it. If anyone feels it should be readded, I'd love it if that person could list their reasons here before they do so. Joffeloff 14:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be included, but of course ranked as an "entity" (i.e. with an "-" in the first column.) since it is clearly not sovereign. I've renumbered the list around five times, so it is very possible that I've accidentally listed it as "sovereign" by a simple typo. For what it's worth: Hong Kong, Macao, Aruba, and the Netherlands Antilles are listed here as well. So are the Faroe Islands and Greenland, and they are both - constitutionally speaking - integrated parts of Denmark proper, so they are not even dependencies. --Valentinian (talk) 19:59, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just read a bit in the Factbook.. I don't understand why they're listing Tokelau's external debt as 0. Might aswell list Svalbard's external debt as 0. I think this is an inconsistency on their part. I may be wrong, though.
I just can't see how it is relevant to the list - I'm quite sure there are lots of dependent territories with seemingly no external debt, when in reality the government they're dependent of takes care of external debt for all its territories. Joffeloff 20:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] perspective

wouldnt it be more significant to show this, either as % of GDP or per capita or something like that ??

Not really, this list is of gross positions and ignores external assets, and as such is pretty worthless anyway. The reason the US and UK are top are primarily because of the huge capital markets in New York & London. A corporate bond of a German company, traded in New York and owned by a French person counts towards the gross US external debt.

[edit] Layman question

This wouldn't be including savings, obviously, right? Because then all the numbers should sum up to 0. In my mind I consider saving as 'negative debt', thus why I'm asking. Fephisto 03:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Venezuela has payed the external debt. http://www.eldiariodeyaracuy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3236&Itemid=6 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.109.153.149 (talk • contribs)

Is that the gross or net amount? This list is the gross amount, so it is technically possible that the net debt has been paid but that Venezuela's current claims to foreign countries are simply offset by similar claims going the other way. If this is the case, the net debt would be zero, but the gross debt would still exist. Valentinian T / C 10:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] If almost all countries are in debt, then who is the creditor?

There must be something wrong with this list. Where is debt, there must be credit. The meaning of this list isn't clear if the credit side is not taken into account. Taka 06:19, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

This article lists "gross debt" but what you are thinking about is "net debt" (in other words, if A owes B one dollar and B owes C two dollars, both A and B will have a net debt of one dollar and C will be a creditor). However, this table shows the "gross debt" amounts meaning that in this example, A will be listed with a debt of one dollar, B will be listed with a debt of two and (for all we know), C doesn't have any debt, as lists of "gross debt" doesn't include material about money owed to you by others but only lists the amounts of money that you owe somebody else. I'm not aware if we have a list of countries by net debt on this project. If not, it might be a good idea to include one. Valentinian T / C 13:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)