http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat.htm Do you think the calculation is reliable? A few things come to my mind: i) Out of the ~$10T public debt, 50% are held by the US government itself (to fund Security accounts or other things), only ~25% are held by foreign government (the remaining 25% are held by the public). ii) The $50T Medicare/Medicaid is huge but actually all governements in the world need the money for theirs citizens. The true problem is what% of GDP is spent on health care. Just b'coz it is big it doesn't imply a big problem as other countries hv to spend the money anyway. The problem with US is that it spends a higher % of GDP on health care for mediocre result iii) Household Debt: I can understand it as this has been discussed so many times recently in the media iv) business debt: $10.1T: this seems a good thing as US is borrowing to get positive net return v) financial sector debt (domestic): $15.8T: what does this include??? It seems so vague. Any idea about the breakdown? Attached is a pdf showing US assets overseas and foreign-owned assets in US. BTW, US household net worth is $56T according to this article. Does anyone know US corporate net worth now?? http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/05/news/economy/fundflows/index.htm
US liability is big but to me they are just borrowing from other countries to make even more money... this is a good thing to US. Here is a report showing net worth of different countries in the world. US is simply the most wealthy country in the world (~44T, around 1/3 of WW total wealth).