I agree. Raising awareness is a long process but it has got to be done.

Where do we get our pays and pension cheques if “the banks and financial institutions go bankrupt”? The job of paying everyone including the pollies has been outsourced to them long time ago.

Thanks for these links. Great resources. Had no time to look in detail but some countries look better than others on some measures of debt and conversely.

TruthIsThereIsNoTruth’s reply to my post #44 in which he stated bank debts were swapped to $AU made me feel a little better about our bank debt, but not much better about the continued flood of money pushing up house prices (it seems the Gov FHVG can be largely blamed for that though). The arguments by others that attempting to inflate people out of this debt would be disasterous did not bring much peace of mind either.

As for forced movements to the country, I am not sure how far we are ever removed from authoritarian gov. It seems we inch closer everyday. In any case, in the Great Depression people were moved to the country to work. That was how they dealt with unemployment, I have no doubts they would do the same today if necessary.

I have conducted a small (but expensive) sustainability experiment in my own area, and I am now convinced that raising sufficient local awareness and involvement for any ideas like yours at the local level is unlikely in most suburbs (with exceptions such as Brunswick maybe) – at least until a substantial number of people are really affected (I believe many are now, but these people are the most marginalised and voiceless in our society). It probably still worth trying though – eventually the time may be right.

Philip #112

What sort of concession could be made? Assume we do end up in an Icelandic situation; what concessions have they /could they be given by capitalists and the state?

The U.S. used to be the largest creditor nation , then steadily transitioned to where we are now , the largest debtor. Steve’s data probably incorporates the decline in the current account , which I’m guessing started in earnest in the 1970’s , and that difference might explain why he shows deterioration of the previously stable debt/GDP ratios starting about then.

You might find something in the links at this post on Seeking Alpha :

http://seekingalpha.com/article/125900-global-debt-a-closer-look

I can’t vouch for validity of the data. Some is from the “CIA World Factbook” , a title that’s always struck me as oxymoronic.

Another variation of the data I posted by Friedman is shown in this post by Menzie Chinn ( see Fig. 1 ):

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/10/the_naitonal_sa.html

There you can see the disconnect , again starting around 1983-84 , from the balanced offsetting between public and private deficits/surplus that held previously (graph only covers back to 1967).

Wow! Both the stability of the PH Credit / GDP ratio before 1984 AND it’s decoupling thereafter are impressive. These two lines aren’t event scaled to overlap each other, they’re actual values.

Steve has alluded to France behaving differently than others among OECD countries on that measure. In his ppt (below) though, on p14, France is not shown. Besides these are yearly changes, not levels. Has anyone seen such graphs, perhaps updated (these were 2007)?

Also, it would be interesting to see the level of total debt (Private + Public) to GDP as France is known as a government friendly country : does the public debt make up for the private one? For example, 2009’s “OECD in figures” page 80 (the pdf is free) public debt in France doubled since 1989 whereas Ireland’s has declined.

A major issue in assessing debt sustainability are the actual assets facing debt : Investment? Welfare? but also a country’s demographics. Russia, for example, has a decreasing population, so it’s debt per capita should be inflated relative to the standard Debt / n ratio where n is the # of inhabitants. Any existing visual tools for this?

http://www.oecd.org/document/47/0,3343,en_2825_293564_43896303_1_1_1_1,00.html

http://www.dealersgroup.com.au/kb/cf24-steve-keen.pdf