Those figures are completely wrong or at least compare apples and oranges. The public debt of Luxembourg e.g. is trivial, in the order of 5 billion € What they include to reach that enormously elevated figure are the financial assets of foreigners in Luxembourg banks (it's a prime destination for tax evasion). While from the perspective of Luxembourg technically speaking these are debts, they're hardly liabilities. They're in fact the raison d'ętre of the whole Luxembourg economy and the main source of their wealth.