Global Debt Tops $230 Trillion

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Global Debt Tops $230 Trillion

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The Institute of International Finance reported that global debt reached over $230 trillion at the end of the third quarter. That is up $16 trillion from the end of 2016. By comparison, the U.S. national debt is $20 trillion.

The debt includes national, personal and corporate figures.

The number is shocking given that it exceeds the gross domestic product of the world’s 100 largest nations. These are led by the United States. In the second place, the United Kingdom has debt of $7.9 trillion. At number three, France has debt of $5.4 trillion. Rounding out the top five, Germany has debt of $5.1 trillion and the Netherlands has debt of $4.3 trillion.

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U.S. household debt is just shy of $13 trillion. According to Reuters:

Total U.S. household debt was $12.84 trillion in the three months to June, up $552 billion from a year ago, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report published on Tuesday.

The proportion of overall debt that was delinquent, at 4.8 percent, was on par with the previous quarter. However a red flag was raised over the transitions of credit card balances into delinquency, which the New York Fed said “ticked up notably.”

China’s foreign exchange reserves, the largest of any country in the world, are approximately $3 trillion.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, often said to be the world’s largest, has a value of $1 trillion.

Because of debate about how much debt is too much debt, whether it be national, student or credit card debt, it is impossible to say if the Institute of International Finance figure should be regarded as something of a warning. Given its vastness, there is no way to tell.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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