Total debt as percentage of GDP

[Beet]

One of the flaws of "national" debt, is that it is really only a measure of government debt. But 80% of our economy is in the private sector (other than federal, defense, and state & local governments). To arrive at the real "national" debt, you need to take into account not only the government debt (relatively small) but also private credit market debt. So discuss this chart:



It provides quite a different (and more disturbing) picture than jfern's chart.

[Beet]

So USA = big, big, big Iceland?

Iceland's debt was more like 1000% of GDP. But more crucially, Iceland's debt was denominated in other currencies. So there are some important differences, however, I am not ruling out a similar ending. We'll see...