Hello all,
The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has just published an excellent pamphlet on government debt by Stephan Kaufmann and Ingo Stützle, which is very useful for immunizing people against the arguments for austerity that are ubiquitous these days:
http://www.rosalux.de/publication/38962/is-the-whole-world-going-bankrupt.html
Is the whole World going bankrupt? Government debt: What it is and how it functions. «luxemburg argumente», English version, December 2012.