McKinsey is updating its 2010 report and has shared its interim findings These findings are not comforting.
According to the consulting firm, by the end of March this year, the aggregate indebtedness of the UK - that's the sum of household debts, company debts, government debts and bank debts - had risen to 492% of GDP, or almost five times the value of everything we produce in a single year.
That compares with 481% at the end of 2008.
So the UK's total indebtedness has increased, and is still the biggest relative to GDP of any of the big economies. That said, Japanese indebtedness is pretty much the same size - at the end of 2010, as opposed to the end of March 2011, Mckinsey says Japan's debts were also 492% of GDP.
US indebtedness is less, at 282% of GDP by the middle of this year, down from 296% in December 2008.
In the case of America, government debt is on a steeply rising trend, jumping from 61% of GDP to 80% over the past two and a half years.
But household debts have fallen from 98% of GDP to 87% of GDP, as homeowners have handed back the keys of their houses to lenders and reneged on the debts (which is possible in much of the US, but almost impossible in the UK).
So what's going on? Why are UK debts still going up? Full story/source
Angelo: Being the BBC they will always err on the side of the powers that be as we have come to expect and skip over the bankster bail out issue which is so embedded in the pretext of any analysis. Stockholm syndrome in the UK. DEBT JUBILEE!(might even hurt the parasite)