this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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Europe

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[–] MattR@feddit.org 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

No, that's not how you should compare debts. Either show debt per capita or debt as a percentage of GDP. The shown chart is just misleading.

[–] Melchior@feddit.org 0 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

If you believe a debt crisis in Albania is as bad as one for in the US for the world economy, then you are right.

[–] Undertaker@feddit.org 0 points 1 hour ago

Stick to tge criticism. The user is right

[–] MattR@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

I have neither said that nor do I believe that and I think you have misunderstood me. I criticise how data is presented in this chart. That's all.

[–] Bob@feddit.org 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Does this coincide with their GDP overtaking that of the EU, as well?

Edit: I looked it up. The IMF says that in 2026, the EU has a GDP of $22.52 trillion and China has a GDP of $20.65 trillion. The US has a GDP of $31.82 trillion, for comparison.

Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/CHN/USA

[–] HumbleExaggeration@feddit.org 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Hm, ETFs usually grow by about 7-8 % historically. The US dept grew by 7,9 % historically. Is all the growth we see just money being borrowed?

[–] Melchior@feddit.org 3 points 10 hours ago

Generally speaking debt to GDP is a good indicator for that. If you borrow money and invest it well, which for a governement means infrastructure and education spending(also has to be done well though), then your economy should grow faster then your debt. However there is a big issue here, in that some countries have their central banks print money and then buy government debt with that. When that happens that is basically just the government lending money to itself, so a big fat zero.

But a lot of US growth is debt fueld. Wars cost a lot of money after all.

[–] mr_anny@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 hours ago (3 children)
[–] copacetic@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 hours ago

For the US, only the state is debtor for the last years, while households, businesses, and foreigners are creditors.

The key word to search for "sectoral balances". I could not quickly find any good and recent data for the EU or China though. For Germany, state and foreigners are debtors, but that is probably not true for the whole EU.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 3 points 9 hours ago

National government debts are usually owed to a variety of domestic banks, private investors, and similar interests. I don't know about China for sure, but I've never seen anything indicating that it's different in this regard. Not much of it, as a proportion, is owed to foreign governments or investors. So far as I'm aware, the main unusual things about China's government debt is that Chinese citizens have a high savings rate (meaning banks holding those savings have more to work with as creditors) and the provincial governments have quite a lot of debt (potentially almost as much as the central government when added up, though I don't know where to get reliable numbers for this)