El Nivel de Deuda

THE headlines are all about sovereign debt at the moment. But that is only part of the problem. Debt has risen across the economy, from consumers on credit cards, though industrial companies borrowing for expansion and financial companies using debt to buy risky assets.

The interactive graphic above shows the overall debt levels for a wide range of countries, based on data supplied by the McKinsey Global Institute. In theory there is no maximum level for debt relative to GDP, but Ireland and Iceland (not on this map) found the limit in practice when they hit eight-to-ten times GDP.

The debt is also broken down by sector. Note the huge size of Britain’s banks relative to its economy, and the high level of Spanish corporate debt. These figures will worry owners of government bonds since the 2008 crisis showed that governments may be forced to stand behind private sector debt.

We have also updated a table we published in February, ranking countries in terms of their primary budget balance, debt-to-GDP ratios plus the relationship between the yield on their debt and economic growth (if the former is larger than the latter, the debt burden is getting steadily worse). Spain has now taken over from Greece as the country in the worst position. Here’s the table:



For more detail, see our special report on debt, which explains how the burden has built up over the last 50 years, and has affected economies from Florida to Iceland.