The US Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System recently published the latest statistics on US external debt. As of 31 December 2014, the total amount of debt stood at $17.1 trillion (Table 1). According to the IMF’s preliminary estimates (the final data is not yet available), US GDP in 2014 was $17.416 billion. In other words, the level of US external debt in 2014 reached 98.3 per cent of GDP. Just a little bit more and the US will cross the psychologically important external debt threshold of 100 percent (EU countries crossed it back in 2012).
