G-7 Nations Owe a Staggering Amount of Money

The countries that are in the "G-7" are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

These are arguably the seven "wealthiest" and most industrialized nations in the world.

I surrounded the word wealthiest with quotation marks because once you look at how much money these nations owe, you really have to start to wonder if they are really "rich" at all.

The G-7 nations, as a whole, owe more than $30 trillion dollars in total.

This is $30 trillion dollars in total national debt that is owed to other countries (such as China), their own people, mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, etc.

Some of the numbers in my calculations are accurate up to this minute - some are based on 2008 estimates from the CIA.

Anyway that you slice it, these seven nations are on the hook for an incredible amount of money.

The G-7 meets periodically to help determine the course of the global economy.

However, after looking at the books of some of these countries, you have to wonder if they should have any say at all.

Now, the United States owes the most money of any of the G-7 countries ($11.4 trillion dollars). This should not surprise anyone.

However, based on the percentage of debt to GDP, the United States is faring FAR better than some of the other countries in the G-7.

For instance - Japan. Japan owes in excess of $8 trillion dollars, which is far greater than their annual GDP.

Italy owes more than $2.5 trillion dollars, which also exceeds their annual GDP number.

Here is a quick breakdown of the money that is owed by each of the seven countries:

Canada - $404 Billion USD
France - Approx. $2 Trillion USD
Germany - Approx. $2.5 Trillion USD
Italy - Approx. $2.5 Trillion USD
Japan - Approx. $8.5 Trillion USD
UK - Approx. $1.3 Trillion USD
United States - Approx. $11.4 Trillion USD

Canada owes the least amount of money in this list, but they also have the smallest economy (by far). Canada has been able to pay down a great deal of their debt over the past 10-15 years, however they recently announced that they will return to running a deficit due to the global financial crisis.

These numbers start to get extra scary when you look out over the next decade.

For instance, the United States is expected to have a total national debt approaching $20 trillion dollars by the end of 2019.

Japan's debt is growing at an alarming pace, and their economy is showing no signs of turning around anytime soon.

Italy has a very worrisome debt load as well.

Unemployment rates are spiking in most G-7 nations, which means that these countries must fork out more money to support their citizens. They only serves to add to their overall debt loads.

When you look over these numbers, you really have to ask yourself:

-will these nations be able to continue borrowing at such an alarming clip?

-will these nations be able to slow down on the amount of money that they need to borrow over the coming years?

-how long will it take until nations such as the United States run at a surplus once again?

Filed under: General Knowledge