Posted on 08/09/2013 5:34:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Japan's finance ministry released data Friday showing that the country's debt burden has topped 1 quadrillion yen for the first time.
Yes, more than 1 quadrillion. If you want to get specific, Japan's central government debt at the end of June was 1,008,628,100,000,000 yen.
Here's another way to write that: 1,008.6 trillion yen. In U.S. dollars, it's $10.5 trillion.
While one quadrillion is largely a symbolic level, the eye-popping number underscores a real challenge for Japan, which has more debt as a percentage of GDP than any other developed nation.
Tokyo has now issued 830 trillion yen in government bonds, and the country's revenue collection has never kept pace. Japan's gross public debt is projected to hit 230% of GDP by 2014 after years of sustained deficits.
Japan has increased borrowing this year to spend more on the country's infrastructure as part of an ambitious program of economic stimulus aimed at ending decades of stagnation and falling prices.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has cautioned that Japan must do more to arrest rising debt. "Stopping and reversing the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio is crucial," the organization has said.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Dang! The Japanese are beating us again. Our President sucks!
The US debt is bigger than this and hidden by the stopped Debt clock.
>> hidden by the stopped Debt clock.
What do you mean by that? I can think of a couple possibilities but I can’t tell for sure.
I thought they made the debt clock illegal.
While their debt is about 60% of ours, we have a bit less than triple the population.
RE: Dang! The Japanese are beating us again.
No they’re not. If you convert our $17 Trillion debt to Yen, at 1 USD to 100 Yen, we are 1.7 Quadrillion yen in debt. Nearly TWICE theirs.
That doesn’t even count our other unfunded liabilities.
SWEET! We're still #1! This is our new pride in America Exceptionalism. Nobody spends like America! :o(
We had to learn what a trillion is. Now I guess we’ll have to learn what a quadrillion is.
thx
1 quadrillion dollars in pallets of $100M dollars each (in $100 dollar bills).
The red spike is the size of the Burj Dubai in Dubai, United Arab Emirates is currently the world's tallest man-made structure.
I realize there's about 100 yen per dollar, so a quadrillion yen stack of 10,000 yen bills (100x100) would only be the façade row, but still....
Which brings up the same question for Japan. Does their number include unfunded liabilities?
Do any of the published stats tell the "truth"?
George Orwell meets Lewis Carroll.
I have a set of Zimbabwean banknotes which total 180 trillion dollars. Because I am such a nice freeper I will cover the national debts of the US and Japan for some passes to Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland. :)
Japan is definitely “ahead” on the debt vs GDP ratio.
As for the unfunded liabilities, Japan probably cooks their books the same as we do.
Yet, they likely have more productive people.
They are screwed demographically regardless.
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