Visualizations : OECD Country Debt, in million USD : Fair Deal on Debt CIC is...

This shows Japan had a bigger debt than the US in 2004… Is this data correct??

it’s likely, because Japan’s public debt is humongous. Where do your data come from?

I got the data from the “OECD Statistics” page:

This is just central government debt issue. Excluding states and localities will produce misleading international comparisons. Also, much more interesting is indebtedness to the rest of the world, which these data do not address. Finally, even neglecting the just mentioned issues, you need at least to deflate these debt numbers by GDP.

This should be debt in “Billions” not “Millions”. US debt is $4.6 Trillion or $4,606,000,000,000. As ridiculous as that number is, it is probably 10% of the true U.S national debt when “off-the-books” things like Social Security, Medicare and two-war fronts liabilities are added to the national credit card. By the way, what happened to Japan in 2005? It disappeared.

Japanese debt disappears in 2005?

the K after the number signifies a thousand. so, US debt per this graph is 4.606 thousand (add 3 zeros) million (add 6 zeros), or 4,606,000,000,000 = 4.6 trillion.