World Debt at Record Levels

Central bankers, government policies push global debt to brink

What happens when central banks push interest rates to zero – in some cases below zero – and hold them there for nearly a decade?

You get debt.

Lots and lots of debt.

Record levels of debt, in fact.

That exactly what happened over the last 10 years. In the wake of the Great Recession, central banks worldwide gave us 10 years of easy money. With loans cheap and easy to come by, households borrowed money. And governments borrowed money. And corporations borrowed money.

With all of this borrowing, it should come as no shock that today the world is swimming in a sea of red ink.

In fact, global debt has never been as high as it is right now. The world has run up nearly $250 trillion in debt. According to a Citigroup analysis of data from the Institute of International Finance, global debt is three times what it was just 20 years ago.

The US, China, the eurozone and Japan carry most of the debt load. These regions have more than two-thirds of the world’s household debt, three-quarters of corporate debt and nearly 80% of government debt.

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