>
>On Wed, 15 May 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> >BTW, how big of a debt-GDP ratio is this?
>>
>> Russia's 49% is around Latin American levels - a bit below Chile's, a
>> bit above Mexico's, close to Brazil's.
>
>Interesting. Germany is higher than that, no? And Italy and Japan are
>more than double that high. Are those three outliers, or is the average
>Latin American debt-GDP ratio now lower than the European and OECD
>averages? And yet we still call them profligate without a touch of shame.
Are you talking about government debt to GDP ratios or external debt to GDP? Most of the Japanese and German debt is internal, not external. Besides, even in their weakened states, they're First World countries with lots of human and capital resources and hard currencies. Chile exports blueberries, not Toyotas or BMWs.
Doug