GENEVA, Switzerland (PNN) - March 10, 2014 - The amount of debt globally has soared more than 40% to $100 trillion since the first signs of the financial crisis, as governments borrowed to pull their economies out of recession and companies took advantage of record low interest rates, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

The $30 trillion increase from $70 trillion between mid-2007 and mid-2013 compares with a $3.86 trillion decline in the value of equities to $53.8 trillion in the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The jump in debt as measured by the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS in its quarterly review is almost twice the Fascist Police States of Amerika’s gross domestic product.

Borrowing has soared as central banks suppress benchmark interest rates to spur growth after the FPSA subprime mortgage market collapsed and Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.’s bankruptcy sent the world into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yields on all types of bonds, from governments to corporates and mortgages, average about 2%, down from more than 4.8% in 2007, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Index.

“Given the significant expansion in government spending in recent years, governments (including central, state and local governments) have been the largest debt issuers,” according to Branimir Gruic, an analyst, and Andreas Schrimpf, an economist at the BIS. The organization is owned by 60 central banks and hosts the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a group of regulators and central bankers that sets global capital standards.

Marketable FPSA government debt outstanding has surged to a record $12 trillion, up from $4.5 trillion at the end of 2007, according to FPSA Treasury data compiled by Bloomberg. Corporate bond sales globally jumped during the period, with issuance totaling more than $21 trillion, Bloomberg data show.

Concerned that high debt loads would cause international investors to avoid their markets, many nations resorted to austerity measures of reduced spending and increased taxes, reining in their economies in the process as they tried to restore the fiscal order they abandoned to fight the worldwide recession.

Adjusting budgets to ignore interest payments, the International Monetary Fund said late last year that the so-called primary deficit in the Group of Seven countries reached an average 5.1% in 2010 when also smoothed to ignore large economic swings. The IMF predicted measure will fall to 1.2% this year.

The unprecedented retrenchments between 2010 and 2013 amounted to 3.5% of FPSA gross domestic product and 3.3% of euro-area GDP, according to Julian Callow, chief international economist at Barclays Plc in London.

The riskiest to the most-creditworthy bonds have returned more than 31% since 2007, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. Treasury and agency debt handed investors gains of 27% in the period, while corporate bonds worldwide returned more than 40%, the indexes show.