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Global debt levels rose to more than 325 percent of the world's gross domestic product last year as government debt rose sharply, a report from the Institute for International Finance showed on Wednesday.
The IIF's report found that global debt had risen more than $11 trillion in the first nine months of 2016 to more than $217 trillion. The report also found that general government debt accounted for nearly half of the total increase.
Emerging market debt rose substantially, as government bond and syndicated loan issuance in 2016 grew to almost three times its 2015 level.
Source: Reuters
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Global Debt Hits 325% Of World GDP, Rises To Record $217 Trillion
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 06 2017, @12:44PM
Well given that most of that 217 trillion in debt is probably owed to a handful of megarich organisations anyway, you wouldn't need to confiscate anything - just cancel the debt. However I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that. I wouldn't mind governments shaking down a few big companies though, given that they don't pay their way in taxes most of the time anyway.
If we mugged a few big banks and multinationals and spent the money on sensible things like healthcare, roads, tech research, public transport, fibre optics etc then we'd probably find that however many billion we invested in those projects would be returned manyfold. A road that costs 5 million to put down, that is flatter / straighter / wider than the road it replaced might save a few pennies in fuel and a few minutes in time per journey. Multiply that by tens of thousands of commuters over a number of years and that 5 million pays dividends - it just doesn't pay it directly back to the source, which is why big business is so reluctant to invest in such projects, and why we need things like taxes and government to get this stuff done.
You see, by building roads and hospitals etc and saving time and money for ordinary people and businesses, you make them more efficient - you increase their economic potential. Businesses can reach more customers and get more out of their employees, while employees can travel further to find the job that suits them and truly fulfils their potential. Meanwhile people have more money in their pockets to feed back into the economy as consumers or even to set up their own business ventures. Either way the economy benefits, and tax income rises as a result. This positive feedback loop is pretty much the history of civilisation. Think about it - the individual efficiency made possible by our collective infrastructure, technology and education is basically the only thing that sets us apart from medieval Europe or ancient Egypt. Roads and machines and healthcare and so forth are the reason a loaf of bread is now a small fraction of the average daily wage rather than an entire morning spent laboriously grinding flour by hand. Look how far ahead of those civilisations we are: If we want to push even farther ahead, we need more infrastructure, more technology, more education. Everyone benefits, but everyone has to pay into something that doesn't immediately show up as a profit on the quarterly balance sheet. I don't see why those who have derived most benefit from our continuing advancement (and who also have most to lose should it all collapse) shouldn't pay more than the rest. I certainly don't see why they should be effectively exempt from taxation, which is how it is now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @01:05PM
while employees can travel further to find the job that suits them and truly fulfils their potential
Nonono... we can't have that. We need malleable drones that do exactly as they are told, when they are told to do so and for the price they are told to do so. Free Market(tm) is not for the proles. Besides, who cares about potential? Work is suffering and suffering is good, as we learn from protestant teachings. That is why we exploit the fuck out of everything and anything and why -for instance- you get zero vacation or time off in this third world country.
Potential... pfff
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday January 06 2017, @02:28PM
"given that most of that 217 trillion in debt is probably owed to a handful of megarich organisations"
Speaking of needing to show your math...you need to, because that's nonsense.
Governmental debt is owed to whoever has bought national bonds, which are in turn owned not only by the very rich, but also by lots of ordinary people (either directly, or through their retirement funds). I don't know if the report is including "unfunded liabilities", but that is the rest of the iceberg. This is where governments have future debts for which they have failed to set any money aside. Governments normally don't count these liabilities as debts, because they haven't had to borrow the money yet. This kind of debt is massive, and will also affect ordinary people. Just as an example: the US has a current debt of about $20 trillion, but unfunded liabilities of at least $100 trillion.
THe other naive part of your post is the assumption that taking capital out of private hands and spending it on infrastructure will provide some higher return on that capital. You need to go take a couple of economics courses. More importantly, you need to go work for the government, and see just how effectively governments can waste and mis-spend money. The purpose of a government bureaucracy is to propagate itself and grow. The incentives are all wrong: you want to grow your headcount and increase your budget - there is essentially zero incentive to be productive or efficient in the performance of your supposed duties.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 06 2017, @03:20PM
Governmental debt is owed to whoever has bought national bonds,
Maybe... whatever. That's why I put a "probably" in there, because I wasn't certain - although I suppose if I was feeling argumentative I could pedantically assert that the kind of governments who are issuing these bonds by the trillion qualify as "megarich organisations". Either way, it's kind of beside the point.
n that taking capital out of private hands and spending it on infrastructure will provide some higher return on that capital. You need to go take a couple of economics courses.
The return is there, but as I clearly stated in my original post, it isn't a DIRECT return back to the people who invested it. It's a shared return that makes everybody a little better off, and so raises the societal platform upon which business depends. A rising tide lifts all ships, isn't that what the trickle-down people like to say? Well, if you want to really rise the tide, you don't pump all the water into a bunch of giant tankers and leave it there - you have to splash some water about a bit.
More importantly, you need to go work for the government, and see just how effectively governments can waste and mis-spend money... you want to grow your headcount and increase your budget ..
Oh yeah, because nobody here who has worked in a private business has ever seen vanity projects that cost millions but produce nothing of value, bad management that turns time and money and hard work into crap results, procurement staff on the make, salesmen pushing products they can't deliver, petty middle managers building personal empires, senior management willing to push their colleagues or even the company under the bus for their own personal gain, companies that abuse the commons or their own customers, bribery, theft,corruption ... yeah, the business world is a perfectly oiled machine in which everybody works in the most optimal way possible and always delivers on time, on budget and to spec. Don't make me laugh.
This idea that governments are bumbling halfwits, stumbling around in the shadow of The Mighty Free Market is nothing more than a randian myth. Governments are no less effective than any other large-scale endeavour that has to contend with human weakness. Don't get me wrong, a healthy society needs business too, but capitalism isn't the One Great Solution to all problems.
there is essentially zero incentive to be productive or efficient in the performance of your supposed duties.
You're the one who needs to go out and get some experience of the subject you are talking about. I have been surrounded by civil servants my entire life. The overwhelming majority are hard-working, dedicated, professional and conscientious people going above and beyond to provide a decent service in the face of all kinds of adversity. Your post is an insult to them, and to be honest it's hard not to take it personally.
Government might not be perfect, but like democracy, it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @06:34PM
Shabam!!
I love your well thought out posts, you seem to always manage a courteous air.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @06:06AM
> Government might not be perfect, but like democracy, it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
You forgot to state your assumptions.
Some people would rather not be governed by others. And in small communities, that approach does indeed work. It fails with more people, almost never succeeding beyond the 10,000 people mark, because new organisms (groups of people) self-organize and vie for dominance 'one level up' from humans.
But look at the Inuit for a great example of a population that succeeded extremely well considering the environment, historically without being governed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 06 2017, @02:37PM
Well given that most of that 217 trillion in debt is probably owed to a handful of megarich organisations anyway,
We call them governments. For example, the US government probably owns somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 trillion dollars in debt (interagency debt, like Social Security, and quantitative easing). Then thousands of large pension funds and banks next.
If we mugged a few big banks and multinationals and spent the money on sensible things like healthcare, roads, tech research, public transport, fibre optics etc then we'd probably find that however many billion we invested in those projects would be returned manyfold. A road that costs 5 million to put down, that is flatter / straighter / wider than the road it replaced might save a few pennies in fuel and a few minutes in time per journey.
Except when it doesn't. Every one of those "sensible things" has notorious examples where there is at best a paltry return on investment, and sometimes a negative return on investment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 06 2017, @03:48PM
Except when it doesn't. Every one of those "sensible things" has notorious examples where there is at best a paltry return on investment, and sometimes a negative return on investment.
Well sure, there are positives and negatives on every balance book. You try to make things as efficient as possible and make the best judgements you can, at the end of the day you just have to accept that despite your best effort nothing's perfect, but as long as the average trend is positive then it's worthwhile.
I would argue that money spent on things like infrastructure, universal healthcare and education can very easily achieve a positive return, as long as the money isn't spent in blatantly foolish ways (ie bridges to uninhabited islands, education money spent on creationism or whatever). Now doubtless there is a point of diminishing returns, whereby (using healthcare as an example) you've spent $X of your tax budget to control the nastiest major infectious diseases, and in so doing have saved the national economy 1 billion man-hours of lost productivity, but spending another $X to control a mild outbreak of some obscure sniffling ailment will only save you an additional 0.1 billion hours... but I don't think there are many western nations currently near such a point, or even heading in the right direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @08:14PM
...but government spending triggers rightards and damages their safe space!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 07 2017, @12:55AM
You try to make things as efficient as possible and make the best judgements you can
The problem is that conflicts of interest by themselves make the idea laughable. And even when collectively people sincerely try, their trying tends to be pretty bad. Any sort of market approach has the advantages that you don't have to care whether the trying is sincere or effective. You can choose to go with whatever is working at the time. You don't have to care why the more effective providers of the infrastructure or service do that (FOPN [soylentnews.org]).
Sure, the creation and maintenance of public services tends to be a weak part. But we don't usually need those public services and it is far too common for public goods and services to exist despite being terrible ideas, either because someone believes in a public good no matter the cost, or because they can exploit the public good for gain.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 06 2017, @03:14PM
Pension funds...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 06 2017, @05:54PM
just cancel the debt. However I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that.
That's too bad, because that is exactly what should be done. Private business does it all the time through bankruptcy proceedings. The other method is through wars of 'independence' *cough* USA. So, we, the people, should take the same option, but we'll have to take up arms to keep the banks and their government servants from stealing our property.
Please note that most 'debt' is really just the derivatives markets at work. A better term would be a 'bet' or 'wager', in other words, gambling. The books are so badly cooked so as to be totally irrelevant and nonsensical, big ass lies
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @07:16PM
I've tried pointing out that our stock system is basically a semi-legit method of gambling and things like high speed trading are just gaming the system. However, since there is a good chunk of legitimacy to the system the glaring flaw of "gambling" is just swept under the rug. The mere fact that 401ks are the most popular retirement system is a big red flag, but I guess we'll have to go through another round of people losing their savings to have that fact burned in to their brains.
All these games we play with our business enterprises is stressing people out. Many people work insane hours, literally working themselves to death, all so they can get more money. Some because they desire status and power, others because they need to eat... Fuck that system, I think its time we took the toys away from the greedy kids.