The IMF last week released figures showing that word debt had reached $152 trillion, a record 225% of world GDP. Even though governments’ borrowing costs are ultra-low, budget deficits in the U.S. Britain and Japan are running at extraordinarily high levels, yet all the chatter is about ways to increase them rather than rein them in. Actuarially, the prospects are for even worse deficits as more baby boomers retire and European birth rates shrink the population. Truly this is unsustainable, to be succeeded by a global crash or several decades of grinding austerity. By 2050, the current period will be known as the years of fiscal profligacy, and will be universally condemned.
The sectoral breakdown of the debt increase is highly disturbing. In rich countries, both in 1002-2008 and 2009-2015, total debt increased by about 35% of GDP. However, whereas in 2002-08 the 35% increase was divided equally between households and non-financial corporations, in 2009-15, the vast majority was governments. What’s more, in rich countries gross debt increased over the period from 200% of GDP to 270%.
In emerging markets, the picture was less dire. Total debt increased from around 100% to 120% over the 2002-08 period, with government debt declining over the first half of the period and increasing in the second half, while household and financial debt increasing modestly over both halves of the period. Given the excessively low interest rates pursued by the world’s major economies over this period, this must be rated a solid performance by emerging market governments and their economies as a whole. As in most areas of economic management, emerging markets since 2009 have not been perfectly run, but their fiscal management beats the hell out of that in the rich “advanced” economies.
Low-income countries have an even better picture, though their management has deteriorated since 2008. Total debt has declined from 130% of GDP to around 80% of GDP, although that decline came entirely in 2002-08, when government debt in low income countries declined by an astounding 60% of GDP, presumably partly because of the African and other debt write-off schemes of the period. Still, the backsliding since 2009 has been modest, and overall these countries have been admirably fiscally managed, especially given their problems of poverty.
