AFR awards “Borrower of the Year” to Japan

On my third read through of Saturday’s Australian Financial Review (AFR) I just noticed on their “The Dubious Distinction Awards 2012” page the Number One slot goes to ‘Borrower of the Year’ who is Japan.

As you can see from the item at right (which I had to photograph with my Pentax K-5 because I am having problems with my Epson Scanner) Japan is seriously deeply in debt. And that would be SERIOUSLY DEEPLY in debt.

Japan has managed to clock up borrowings of over 20 times the government’s annual revenues and three times the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GPD).

Japan owes its lenders a quadrillion yen. There are about 88.3 yen to the Australian dollar, so that would work out to about 11,325,000,000,000 or 11.3 trillion Aussie dollars.

I don’t know what this means with the world’s third largest economy so far in the red, but it can’t be good. America, which is the world’s largest economy, has a GDP valued at AUS$15 trillion (for 2012)—so Japan almost owes a value equal to America’s entire GDP.