Recently, many countries have been recording the largest budget deficits, as a share of their economies, since the end of World War II. As a result of those deficits, the amount of sovereign debt held by the public-at-large has surged. At the end of the last decade, that debt equaled 40% of the world's annual economic output (as measured by total gross domestic product, or GDP, across all countries), a little above the 40-year average of 36%. Since then, large budget deficits have caused debt held by individual citizens to shoot upward; the International Monetary Fund projects that sovereign debt will reach 62% of worldwide GDP by the end of this year. The sharp rise in debt stems partly from lower tax revenues and higher government spending related to recessions and turmoil in financial markets. However, the growing debt also reflects an imbalance between spending and revenues that predated those economic developments