Just over 35 000 billion, equivalent to 70% of global wealth generated during a year. This is the mountain of debt accumulated by the states of the world according to The Economist. Better still, the British weekly publishes on its website a clock on the public debt (The Global Public Debt Clock): it is counting every second, globally and by country. "The worst economic storm since the 1930s may be starting to clear, but another cloud appeared on the horizon financial: a massive public debt," says learnedly our colleague.
This is undoubtedly a legitimate concern and all means are good for awareness. This is not the first time that the Economist pushes economic information. His Big Mac Index, launched twelve years ago, is to compare the prices of internationally McDonald's sandwiches, universal and uniform product if any. A wonderful invention: a single number tells us the cost of living of any city in the world.
The idea of a counter snapshot of debt is less original. This is becoming a fashion as to produce real-time statistics. Since 2006, INED, the Institute of Population Studies, instantly figure the world's population. On ined.fr, we see the digital counter skip two or three units each second (the increase is actually 2.5 persons, of which approximately two or three). This representation is based on a theoretical model, which does not take into account the "hazards", pandemics or natural disasters, says it at INED. On December 26, 2004, tsunami that devastated Asia, killing 230 000 people in one day, would have completely invalidated the counter. Which did not exist at this time!
Another clock that is built on concrete and not on the Web, rises since June 2009 Full New York near Penn Station. On twenty meters long, it shows the global emissions of CO2, which is 1 000 tonnes per second, and each time the total since the start of the day. Deutsche Bank is sponsoring the project - she is very involved with investments in "low carbon" - is justified thus: "Since you can see them (carbon emissions), it is easy to forget that are there. "Charles Baudelaire did not say another thing there are a hundred and fifty years:" Clock! god sinister, scary, impassive, whose finger is threatening us and said "Remember!". "
That is the purpose of these clocks, which arise on the Internet or wandering the streets to raise awareness of the evils that threaten us. In New York, already in 1989, a wealthy real estate developer Seymour Dust, worried about soaring deficits of Reagan and Bush, had built an enormous digital screen showing the indebtedness of the federal government. It was then 2 700 billion. What is very small compared to the 11 700 billion currently displayed. The funny thing is that the installation of Dust Seymour had been dismantled. Under the second term of the Clinton Administration, public debt began to fall back because of budget surpluses: the initial software was not intended that the figures can go back. And besides, "a clock can, by definition, go back in time, we remind Gilles Pison, researcher at INED. For this reason, he prefers to describe his device "counter demographic (population may decrease, as in Japan).
The Economist, with its Global Public Debt Clock (sic), would it be pessimistic as to not even consider the possibility of reflux? In the medium term, it seems impossible. The International Monetary Fund has published alarmist predictions that take into account the staggering budget deficits associated with recovery plans in 2009. According to the IMF, the debt of all "developed countries" (United States, Europe, Japan) will rise from 75% of GDP in 2008 to 115% in 2014. Every citizen of the "rich world" (strange term) bear then a separate debt of $ 50 000. The overall situation will be much better in emerging economies. The weight of public debt in 2014 would represent only 23.1% of GDP in China, when it would reach 95.5% in France, 112% in the U.S. and 239.2% in Japan.
The challenge is without historical precedent, stress Carlo Cottarelli and Jose Vinals. The IMF experts consider the four possible solutions: drastic reduction of expenditures, higher taxes, inflation and economic growth accelerated. Italy and Japan, who lived for two decades with ratios above 100%, showed poor growth, without anyone knowing who is the chicken and what is the egg. The fact that so many countries have simultaneously insane debt ratio will "affect the world economy, especially on real interest rates, which remain unknown," the IMF warned. An inflation risk premium is to be feared. "In France, an additional point of interest is an additional annual cost of 10 billion euros for the state," says Thomas Brand, Head of Mission at the Center for Strategic Analysis. To be silent, 'Clock World debt "will be no less frightening as a tic-tac.
This is undoubtedly a legitimate concern and all means are good for awareness. This is not the first time that the Economist pushes economic information. His Big Mac Index, launched twelve years ago, is to compare the prices of internationally McDonald's sandwiches, universal and uniform product if any. A wonderful invention: a single number tells us the cost of living of any city in the world.
The idea of a counter snapshot of debt is less original. This is becoming a fashion as to produce real-time statistics. Since 2006, INED, the Institute of Population Studies, instantly figure the world's population. On ined.fr, we see the digital counter skip two or three units each second (the increase is actually 2.5 persons, of which approximately two or three). This representation is based on a theoretical model, which does not take into account the "hazards", pandemics or natural disasters, says it at INED. On December 26, 2004, tsunami that devastated Asia, killing 230 000 people in one day, would have completely invalidated the counter. Which did not exist at this time!
Another clock that is built on concrete and not on the Web, rises since June 2009 Full New York near Penn Station. On twenty meters long, it shows the global emissions of CO2, which is 1 000 tonnes per second, and each time the total since the start of the day. Deutsche Bank is sponsoring the project - she is very involved with investments in "low carbon" - is justified thus: "Since you can see them (carbon emissions), it is easy to forget that are there. "Charles Baudelaire did not say another thing there are a hundred and fifty years:" Clock! god sinister, scary, impassive, whose finger is threatening us and said "Remember!". "
That is the purpose of these clocks, which arise on the Internet or wandering the streets to raise awareness of the evils that threaten us. In New York, already in 1989, a wealthy real estate developer Seymour Dust, worried about soaring deficits of Reagan and Bush, had built an enormous digital screen showing the indebtedness of the federal government. It was then 2 700 billion. What is very small compared to the 11 700 billion currently displayed. The funny thing is that the installation of Dust Seymour had been dismantled. Under the second term of the Clinton Administration, public debt began to fall back because of budget surpluses: the initial software was not intended that the figures can go back. And besides, "a clock can, by definition, go back in time, we remind Gilles Pison, researcher at INED. For this reason, he prefers to describe his device "counter demographic (population may decrease, as in Japan).
The Economist, with its Global Public Debt Clock (sic), would it be pessimistic as to not even consider the possibility of reflux? In the medium term, it seems impossible. The International Monetary Fund has published alarmist predictions that take into account the staggering budget deficits associated with recovery plans in 2009. According to the IMF, the debt of all "developed countries" (United States, Europe, Japan) will rise from 75% of GDP in 2008 to 115% in 2014. Every citizen of the "rich world" (strange term) bear then a separate debt of $ 50 000. The overall situation will be much better in emerging economies. The weight of public debt in 2014 would represent only 23.1% of GDP in China, when it would reach 95.5% in France, 112% in the U.S. and 239.2% in Japan.
The challenge is without historical precedent, stress Carlo Cottarelli and Jose Vinals. The IMF experts consider the four possible solutions: drastic reduction of expenditures, higher taxes, inflation and economic growth accelerated. Italy and Japan, who lived for two decades with ratios above 100%, showed poor growth, without anyone knowing who is the chicken and what is the egg. The fact that so many countries have simultaneously insane debt ratio will "affect the world economy, especially on real interest rates, which remain unknown," the IMF warned. An inflation risk premium is to be feared. "In France, an additional point of interest is an additional annual cost of 10 billion euros for the state," says Thomas Brand, Head of Mission at the Center for Strategic Analysis. To be silent, 'Clock World debt "will be no less frightening as a tic-tac.
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