Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Speaking of Deficits...

From here:
[Stephen Harper] added that, despite a deteriorating financial situation across the world, the Canadian deficit is a third to a quarter of the size of the shortfalls faced by the United States, Britain and Japan and that the money is being borrowed at historically low interest rates to help create jobs and build infrastructure.
Projected Canadian deficit: $50 billion CAD = $44.6 billion USD
Projected U.S. deficit: $1800 billion USD
Projected U.K. deficit: £175 billion = $279.3 billion USD
Projected Japanese deficit: ??? (anybody?)

But these things are usually measured as percentage of GDP, I gather.

IMF 2008 says:
Canadian GDP: $1.510 trillion USD
U.S. GDP: $14.265 trillion USD
U.K. GDP: $2.674 trillion USD
Japanese GDP: $4.923 trillion USD

Thus:

Canadian deficit: 3.0% of GDP
U.S. deficit: 12.6% of GDP
U.K. deficit: 10.4% of GDP
Japanese deficit: ???

Yup, Steve is telling the truth.

For once.

No comments: