greece starts to undermine the euro, page-18

Ctindale,

Where do you keep track of national and global debt data? Much of this is confusing to me and contradictory.

For example, I heard a guy interviewed a week or two ago. He said if you include off-balance sheet GSE's (Freddie, Fannie and so on) American government debt is 140% of GDP... private debt is 100% GDP and the big killer, corporate debt, comes in at 320% (much higher than one of your charts suggests).

Total American debt is therefore ~560% GDP, which grows to 820% including future healthcare and pension liabilities... and I'm not even sure if these numbers include state debt or not... very confusing.

By contrast in Japan, while their govt debt is huge (200% GDP), private and corporate debt is negligible. So total Japanese debt is much less than America's...

At least we all agree there's too much debt out there! So how can gold help the situation? Jim Rickards on King World News this weekend, says you devalue currencies against gold.

Rowingboat