Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Debt, Total Debt and by Sector as Ratios to GDP



Well, I am stung by “reason’s” criticism of my ‘misleading’ graphs. Yes, they were in nominal terms, but nominal terms are what you have to repay. But here are the same data as graphs plotted as ratios to GDP. They are all ratios of the nominal figures, so the ‘nominality’ cancels out. Not as good as ratios to income, as reason further suggests, especially the likely to be interesting ratios to the income of the various sectors. Which we shall see.

In any case the picture is no prettier, although noisier, ratios being what they are. See: http://anamecon.blogspot.com/2011/10/today-were-just-going-on-little-about_09.html

for the original graphs.


Here is total debt to GDP:


This is the sum of these figures:

GFDEBTN/1000 Total debt of the US federal governemt, divided by 1000because the original graph is presented in millions, and for some reason just doesn’t convert if you naively add graphs together.
HSTCMDODNS Total Household debt of all kinds, I think.
SLGSDODNS Total debt of State and Local Governments.
TBSDODNS Total debt for non-financial businesses.
DODFS Total debt for financial sector.

Pretty much still exponential, with a bulge during the Reagan years. Reagan's good years financed by deficit spending? What would Keynes say?



Here is the graph for the various sectors, separated. Still clear, or even more clear, actually, is the point I was trying to make, in my comment, with the original graph, that deleveraging, and it is mostly deleveraging in the financial sector, seems to correlate with the federal government going into debt at an ever faster rate. That is, our government seems to be borrowing from the banks, to rescue the banks. And the debt that is still increasing, is the debt of the people.


One thing that is interesting is that the debt of the financial sector has gone from the lowest to the highest. Who do they owe? Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSVIXQzsFs


Looks like the banks are just a front.

3 comments:

  1. I usually find Reason's comments to be ones that I agree with. But in this case I cannot even *find* Reason's comments. Got a link?

    "here are the same data as graphs plotted as ratios to GDP..... Not as good as ratios to income..."

    Exactly the same, I would say, as GDP is a measure of income.

    I wish FRED went back before the Great Depression with their numbers.

    Art

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  2. Sorry, I forgot to post the context:
    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/12/deleveraging-progress-varies.html

    I was interested in the ratios of sector debt to the income, or profits, of that particular sector. That's what I'm working on. Not all numbers available from FRED.

    reason keeps track of all his comments. Just click on his name.

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  3. ah, thank you greg.

    "I was interested in the ratios of sector debt to the income, or profits, of that particular sector. That's what I'm working on. Not all numbers available from FRED."

    Maybe the BEA table 1.10 will help:
    Gross Domestic Income by Type of Income

    http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=51&Freq=Qtr&FirstYear=2008&LastYear=2010

    you can download the data in a CSV file (excel can read it) but if you get *all* the data, quarterly, you get more columns than excel can read. doh!

    "Pretty much still exponential, with a bulge during the Reagan years. Reagan's good years financed by deficit spending? What would Keynes say?"

    Keynes would want to know why all the debt of the Reagan years, and since, was not enough to restore vigor to our economy.

    Art

    ReplyDelete