Who's More Screwed: The US or Greece?

According to the International Monetary Fund, the answer is not as clear as you might think. The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has been brewing for some time now, and experts (should I use scare quotes? Fine) "experts" have been chomping at the bit to relay just how awful and intrasigent these indigents are. Some have suggested, for example, that Greece make whatever cuts necessary (even to the point of starving its senior citizens) to pacify the bankers to whom great debt is owned. Others have taken the other route, offering that the best solution for Greece is a simple "we're not paying the debt" followed by 3-4 years of dodging creditors' phone calls. Note to Greece: the banks will be back to lend you more money, just like credit card offers flow in the mail of every bankrupted American. They cannot help themselves. Banks are addicted to lending almost as much as you are to spending. Greece is not the only one condemned in the media by creditors and creditor nations. Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and even France, have taken turns as the whipping boys for banks — banks who once again wanted to privatize the profits of those bonds and now seek to socialize the losses, spreading the risk around to the entire world while reaping the benefits. Yet, are these nations truly the harbingers of gluttony and misappropriation of funds as the banksters would have us believe? Perhaps not. Let's take a look at the IMF's statistics on debt-to-GDP ratios. This ratio gives us a good understanding of where a nation stands in terms of how much it owes, relative to how much is produced in the country. The lower the ratio, the more likely it is that a country has the means to pay off its debts.