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Would be cool to see the same statistic relative to each country's GDP.
That's on the right though?
Yes but it's not sorted by it, so potentially we are missing out on some very small economies that might not make the top ten by total debt but would have a high debt to GDP ratio.
That's true.
Yeah, meant globally though, so top 5 countries by % of their GDP as debt. Could've expressed that more clearly, sorry.
I haven't been able to find that but here's the comprehensive list showing IMF debt by country:
https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/balmov2.aspx?type=TOTAL
It should be a trivial if slightly tedious exercise to look up each country's GDP, make a spreadsheet, divide each country's debt by its GDP and then sort the list by that ratio.
Went ahead and did it:
Source for GDP estimates was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Top 5:
- Sierra Leone, 7.61%
- Central African Republic, 7.46%
- Barbados, 5.97%
- Suriname, 5.62%
- Argentina, 5.13%
By the way notice how on this entire list there is not a single "western" country. The vast majority are from the global south, with the only exceptions being a handful of former Yugoslav and Soviet republics. "Western" countries have plenty of debt but none of it to the IMF.
So what this list effectively shows is the degree to which these countries are still under the colonial subjugation of the West. If you are in debt to the IMF it is very difficult if not impossible to have sovereign control over your own economic policies, and therefore to be able to say that you are a sovereign country.
This makes it very clear that colonialism never ended. There are few actually independent countries in the world today outside of the collective West (which itself really only consists of the imperial hegemon and its various satellites and vassals). Notice how countries like China, Russia, DPRK, Iran are not on this list.
It is no coincidence that of those that are still truly independent most are in some way or another in the crosshairs of the empire.
Of course, if you want to enter into debt with no strings attached (no such thing, but let's just say minimal strings attached) you don't go to the IMF. The IMF is the loan shark of the world. Makes the claims that China is doing "imperialism" so completely absurd when you put BRI next to the IMF and the World Bank. Also, if you just read Lenin for a little bit, you'll realize there's an enormous difference between the myopic, manipulative activities that Western colonialist finance capitalists are doing, vs the long term mutual development plans China is putting into action.
It is interesting to see Argentina and Ecuador among the top 10. Especially, after knowing the context behind those countries...
Nice work!
Ah, I see. Yeah, more data would be nice.