Seriously these articles are all over the place.

http://nogger-noggersblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-next-iceland.html

"However, the two countries that appear most susceptible to an economic collapse are the UK and Switzerland. The UK's debt to GDP ratio is currently 456 per cent while Switzerland's is 433 per cent.

Gradante says: 'While these countries are much bigger than Iceland, they do share certain characteristics that make them vulnerable to further economic hardship. Both countries have developed into major financial intermediaries over time, and have grown sizeable external debts that are denominated in foreign currencies.'

The Hennessee Group believes if either country were to experience a crisis of confidence whereby investors flee the country for safer havens, their currencies could experience a crash similar to that of Iceland's and leaving them potentially insolvent."

Kasz216 said: ...   Rank   Country - Entity   External Debt (million US$)   Date of information   External Debt Per Capita (US$)   Date of population*   External debt (% of GDP)    World $51,780,000 2004 $8,141 2004 est. 78.92%  United States[1] $13,703,567 6/30/2008 $42,343 31-March-08 99.95%  United Kingdom $10,450,000 6/30/2007 $189,855 Q4 2007 376.82%

Oh. External Debt. I accept your points.

Um, the UK figure is mid-2007, before any of the financial crisis. Since then we have been spending massively; I imagine the situation is much worse now. And that US figure is mid-2008, so it's also out of date compared to recent bailouts and stimuli.

Does world external debt mean sum of individual countries' external debts? Or is it Bank of Mars?

@kasz216:

I don't think those numbers are right, our National Statistics site (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=277) shows that debt is at 40% of GDP, granted, it was posted last september, but I don't think it's gone up over 300% since then.

I'm not seeing anything up... and no... that seems about right.  I don't see how it could be wrong when that's the number all the news sites are using.

Keep in mind External Debt is the countires debt.  Not the goverments debt.  Most likely the number you speak of it just the debt racked up by your government.

^Would you care to explain the differences between the two?

Oh, and the link has the end bracket in it, kill that, and it will work.

What your link is to is the Goverments deficit and debt.

Aka what your government is responsible for.

External debt is what your entire country owes.

In otherwords if you were to go to France and take out a loan for a million Francs....

that million francs would be shown up in your External Debt.

The biggest problem the UK has is it's External Debt is in a foreign currency... which means it's external debt ratio increases as it's currency drops vs the currency of it's debtors.

Though for comparison

Icelands banks pushed it's External Debt vs GDP to 600%....

In comparison it's governments debt was only 28%... with a budget surplus no less.