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| | MSN Encarta - National Debt |
 | | Public debts tend to be large-scale credit operations and are contracted on a national scale by central governments and on a lesser scale by provincial, regional, district, and municipal administrative bodies. |
 | | Debt, National, also public debt, sum total of governmental financial obligations, the result of a state's borrowing from its population, from foreign governments, or from international institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. |
 | | That was the lowest point ever reached by the public debt of the U.S. After 1840 it rose to a peak, in the last year of the Civil War, of almost $2.68 billion and a per capita figure of $75.01. |
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