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Re: How do you compare debt levels between different countries?

Peter Sidor — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:18:14 GMT

My bet would be finding how much of a country's tax revenues goes into "debt servicing". What's the most a country can take before defaulting becomes a serious option? 5%? 10%? With tighter and tighter budgets due to rising expectations and neverending "stimulus packages" this should be interesting.

Those would be indeed interesting numbers to find, if anybody has them. Worldbank does not seem to offer them for some reason. :|

Re: How do you compare debt levels between different countries?

Kakugo — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:55:35 GMT

Interesting question.

My bet would be finding how much of a country's tax revenues goes into "debt servicing". What's the most a country can take before defaulting becomes a serious option? 5%? 10%? With tighter and tighter budgets due to rising expectations and neverending "stimulus packages" this should be interesting.

Re: How do you compare debt levels between different countries?

Peter Sidor — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:45:54 GMT

With statistics:

CIA World Factbook

World Bank

They are useful hints, but also very distorted by their relation to the GDP. What other measures would you use?

Re: How do you compare debt levels between different countries?

Stephen — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 03:36:41 GMT

With statistics:

CIA World Factbook

World Bank

Re: How do you compare debt levels between different countries?

Bogart — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 23:00:17 GMT

I wonder what the "Texas Ratio" is for the USA?

How do you compare debt levels between different countries?

Peter Sidor — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:50:52 GMT

That's the question. All countries are in debt, but how do you figure out, which ones are really in trouble, and which ones can continue to heap on some more?