RogerS":n825hthw said:
Look at the amount of debt per person or virtually any of the other metrics in the top lh corner. The only country worse than us is Ireland!
But per-person debt doesn't really mean much, when different countries also have totally different GDPs and are owed totally different amounts by
other countries. If the UK has to pay X every month to pay back its existing debt, it doesn't matter how much X is so long as it gets at least X paid back to it from the money other countries owe it.
The problem Greece has, if you click around that chart, is that basically nobody owes Greece any money at all, but they owe proportionally-speaking a lot of money to other countries. Portugal's in the same boat, and other 'risky' countries like Spain and Italy aren't owed so much as countries like the UK or US which are considered a low risk. Italy has a very similar population and fairly similar GDP to the UK, but look around that chart and it's owed a fraction of the amount the UK is by other countries.
Not to say that the UK is all happy and fine and there's no problem here - not by any means. Just that there are definitely countries worse off than ours - as the text alongside the chart says, the UK is considered a low risk because we have significant assets to balance our significant debts.
