[themgt]

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.

[nknighthb]

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.

[levosmetalo]

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 ;)

[nknighthb]

The numbers are meaningless without context, and in context, the comparison is meaningless. External debt can be huge or tiny.

Luxembourg, population 524,853, has 2.14 trillion in external debt, or >2.7 times China's. While China's per-capita external debt is just $396, to the US's $52,170. Or how about Monaco, population 36,371, external debt, 16.5 billion.

You could add a couple more zeros by denominating the external debt in cents instead of dollars, and comparing it to student debt in dollars, and it would be exactly as useful.