What I find hard to understand is the fact that each country owes other counties huge amounts, but in turn those countries owe just as much back.
If all countries balanced the books by cancelling equivalent debts then interest would not need to be paid and all would be well. (mostly)
Then again that would mean the banks get nowt and we can't have that can we
in 2010 we owed the US 578 bn Euro they owed us 834 bn
I know this is very simplistic, but you get the idea.