Germany's Debt Burden

GERMANY is the second largest debtor to the United States; only Canada outranks her. Approximately 38 percent of the outstanding European bonds which have been publicly offered in the United States are German. According to the Institute of International Finance, the amount of German bonds payable in dollars and still outstanding on August 31, 1934, was $1,047,-184,400. According to this same authority, total European dollar issues in default amount to $1,373,464,900, and of these $982,451,400, or 72 percent, are German.

The problem of European defaults is, indeed, mainly German. The non-German European dollar bonds in default amount in round numbers to $391,000,000, but they are divided among ten different countries and, except in one or two instances, the amount for any one country is small. The total of them all is not much more than the amount of the default of any one of three Latin American countries -- Brazil, Chile and Mexico -- each of which