Student Loans In US More Than China’s Total External Debt

themgt12y ago· 2 in thread

So the United States has built a society in which its (former) students owe the government and large financial corporations more money than the government of China owes the rest of the world. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it sure sounds self-destructive.

nknighthb12y ago

It means absolutely nothing. As the first sentence of the article says, "a comparison like that does not make any sense".

US student debt is ridiculous, but comparing it to the external debt of an export-heavy sovereign doesn't help anyone's understanding. It only perpetuates magical thinking.

levosmetalo12y ago

The comparison is not done for the sake of drawing any conclusion about China debt, it was just to "visualize" how big the debt is. I guess the author could have compared it with the value of total beer production in the world in the last decade, but comparing this debt with the debt of the biggest country in the world gives better impression how big the debt is, at least to someone that thinks there are to many zeroes there.

EDIT: s/depth/debt/g ;)

1 more reply

cmsmith12y ago· 1 in thread

New headline: My car loan is more than the net external debt of Norway (which is negative).

sliverstorm12y ago

Or how about the more straightforward: "Cherry-picking statistics for fun and profit"

seanmcdirmid12y ago

Well, as long as we don't want to talk about China's internal local government debts...which is all coming out of our savings (hence...internal debt).

Sheesh.

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