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Monthly Chart Pack: 25 years of financial history - public debt edition

  • ,  Senior Investment Writer |
  • 28 May 2025
  • Updated 02 Jun 2025

public debt

A deep dive into the last quarter of a century of debt

When David Graeber wrote "Debt: The first 5,000 years", a book which, as the title suggests, offers a controversial interpretation of the history of debt, the notion of borrowing and lending, of bonds, coupons and principal made it into the mainstream. In this chart pack, we look at a small chapter of this long history, zooming in on the last 25 years of public debt.

Download the document here.