Top Debtor Nations

CNBC :                                    External debt (as % of GDP)

1.   Ireland                    1,352%                       
2.   United Kingdom        427.6%                     
3.   Netherlands              395.6%                     
4.   Switzerland               390%                        
5.   Belgium                    345.6%                     
6.   Denmark                   315.2%                     
7.   Sweden                     275%                      
8.   Austria                      268.9%                   
9.   France                       247.2%                   
10.  Portugal                    231.5%                 

11.   Hong Kong               218.8%
12.   Norway                     208.9%
13.   Finland                     205.7%
14.   Germany                  189.4%
15.   Spain                       184.7%
16.   Greece                     175.3%
17.   Italy                        154.6%
18.   Hungary                   124.2%
19.   Australia                   108.8%
20.   United States             95.9%

External debt is a measure of a nation's foreign liabilities, capital plus interest that the government and institutions within a nation's borders must eventually pay. This number not only includes government debt, but also debt owed by corporations and individuals to entities outside their home country.

Below is a different statistic : Central Government Debt-GDP ratio

Gold - final refuge against universal currency debasement

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph 26 Sep 2010 :

States accounting for two-thirds of the global economy are either holding down their exchange rates by direct intervention or steering currencies lower in an attempt to shift problems on to somebody else, each with their own plausible justification. Nothing like this has been seen since the 1930s.

“We live in an amazing world. Everybody has big budget deficits and big easy money but somehow the world as a whole cannot fully employ itself,” said former Fed chair Paul Volcker in Chris Whalen’s new book Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream.

“It is a serious question. We are no longer talking about a single country having a big depression but the entire world.”

The US and Britain are debasing coinage to alleviate the pain of debt-busts, and to revive their export industries: China is debasing to off-load its manufacturing overcapacity on to the rest of the world, though it has a trade surplus with the US of $20bn (£12.6bn) a month.

Collapse of western capitalistic society

Marc Faber - The Gloom, Doom & Boom Report Sep 2009 :
The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today, wars, massive government debt defaults and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society.

Who is not in fiscal disaster ?

Christopher Laird : Who is not in fiscal disaster ?  
Japan is a fiscal disaster. The US is a fiscal disaster. The UK is a fiscal disaster. The EU is a fiscal disaster. All of these bond markets will be next on the firing line, after the EU mess deconstructs into chaos. We already have partial paralysis in the EU and chaos in Greece fighting the cutbacks of the public sector. The Unions are paralyzing the efforts to stem the fatal Greek fiscal situation, which is impossible to fix with cuts. The cuts needed are too large to tolerate.

The whole world that we know is turning upside down. The only thing that prevented two - yes two - world banking collapses and bank holidays was an unlimited US Fed checkbook. And the US is the last bastion of credit salvation for countries in fiscal chaos. I have no doubt the US will be central in any final bailout plans for Greece and Spain and whomever else. But the US cannot bail out every market under the sun.

The only solution anyone is willing to try is more public borrowing. That is not working and will only result in much higher taxes in two years across the world. The public will not tolerate budget cuts either in the US, in the UK, in Japan, in China, and especially in the weaker EU club med economies. Our entire world order is changing for the worse, and is again reaching a crisis stage. One or more of the above building crises will pop in 2010 and it will be 'Oh no, here we go again!'. The others will follow in the next two years.

2010 certainly will go down as a final chapter before all hell breaks loose around the world. And, when the bond markets finally rebel on the last big borrowers who can still get money (the US and others), everything ends badly.

Full Article : Interesting Times & stepping up the game

New Rules of Money - Robert Kiyosaki

Robert Kiyosaki explains New Rules of Money :
why savers lose to inflation in the current economic system,
& why hedging with gold, silver, oil is appropriate.