Quite frankly ya hit the nail on the head here! What I do not know much about but am curious is China. They have their public-facing debt amount but then has the enormous shadow debt boogeyman which from what I understand is a bunch of companies really passing the money around between them all and each taking parts of the other... Somehow that one has to cancel out lmao!

The US debt which makes up a ton of this is mostly held by citizens so no cancelation out there!