I was reading how Romania, during the Ceausescu era, paid off their national debt, although it was very hard on the Romanian people.
How many countries either don’t have debt or have paid it off at one time, even if they no longer are debt free?
Thanks
As I recall, the United States paid off its debt at one point in the 19th century…
As I thought (I was waiting in line at Starbucks when I posted earlier), the U.S. paid off its debt in 1835.
According to this Wikipedia list, which comes from the CIA World Factbook, the only country with no debt at all is Brunei.
However, I think that’s misleading. There are any number of countries–Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Norway, and China come to mind–that have sovereign wealth funds equal to or greater than their government debt. These are countries that are either (a) resource intensive; or (b) where the state owns a substantial share of the economy; or (c) both.
I don’t have time to merge the two lists, and wouldn’t trust the results if I did, but I believe you would find a number of countries with negative “net government debt” if sovereign wealth funds were subtracted out.
This is not a country but the Canadian province of Alberta recently paid off its debt, mostly thanks to oil and gas revenues. The government has plans to start borrowing again though.
Finland paid off all its WWII debt, just a few years after the war ended.