If we look at some of the countries that have come under the spotlight recently, we see pre-crisis debt ratios at relatively modest levels in some cases, but accelerating significantly thereafter.
For example in 2007 the Spanish debt ratio was 36,3 per cent but in 2011 had grown to 68,5 per cent; the debt ratio of Portugal increased from 68,3 per cent to 107,8 per cent; that of Ireland from 24,8 per cent to 108,2 per cent; that of Greece from 107,4 per cent to 165,3 per cent and the Italian ratio increased from 103,1 per cent to 120,1 per cent.