The rest of the world
January 26th, 2008 | by Paul |America is big and bad in terms of the junk we buy and the amount we go into debt to get that junk. But what’s going on in the rest of the world?
Showing the colonies that they can still beat us at something, British personal credit card debt is even higher than Americans, according to this article from Taipan Financial News. The article states the British owe $2.7 trillion on credit cards. I’m comparing that to the $2.5 trillion American debt Money-Zine calculated and I discussed in this blog entry.
However, not being sure about any difference in calculation methods TFN and Money-Zine used (for example, is the American number just credit cards or does it include store credit, lines of credit, etc.), I’m a little skittish about making that comparison.
But here’s a comparison TFN made: “Debt per capita is at a higher level than even for U.S. households. The Brits’ household debt equals 166% of [gross domestic product], as compared with 127% in the U.S.”
The South Korean government actually started encouraging credit card use in 2002 as a way to fight an economic slowdown, according to this article available at Entrepeneur.com. Its from 2004, so look to it more for history than for the latest update. Huge surges in consumer debt followed, naturally. There were also huge surges in consumer debt in 2005, according to this International Herald Tribune article.
In 2006, CBC News did a special report on the rising level of consumer debt among Canadians. My favorite, or as they would say, favourite tidbit was that there are three credit cards for every Canadian over the age of 18.
Compare that to the eight credit cards per American family that Frontline discussed in its absolutely stunning report on the credit industry, and that’s not so bad, but it aint good. Also, according to the CBC, Canadian debt is rising.
As for my final link, I found several connections to this report on the ecological footprints of nations by the Earth Council, which I heard described as an organization set up to monitor the recommendations made by the 1992 Rio summit. I would love to tell you more about the group and the report, but I can’t read Spanish. Maybe you’ll have better luck with that.