Who is the world in debt to?!

Hej you!

As we are talking about debt so much in Henry's class I started to ask myself one elementary question:

"Who the hell is the world in debt to?"

In my opinion the whole debt thing is a circle and should cancel out because
if I lend 50 bucks to Veronika and
Veronika lends 50 bucks to James and
James lends 50 bucks to me
-> wouldn't that just make the whole thing unnecessary?

Apparently it is almost impossible to find an answer to that on the Internet, I've tried for almost two hours now. I don't know if I just can't handle the Internet and that's why I can't get a definite answer or if there just isn't an answer.
The only answers I got until now is that the different governments are in debt to other countries, private banks and organizations like the IWF. I always thought the whole debt thing is a circle and it should close at some point, but I couldn't find it so I'm not sure any more.

Anyway, I did find a pretty cool video in which a twelve-year old girl explains debt on the example of Canada. I liked this video a lot and found it more informative than most of the articles and comments and whatever else I read during my research.

I will definitely ask Henry this question in our next class, and if he can give me a better answer I will update this post.

Oh and by the way, here is a pretty interesting, somehow funny and absolutely disturbing link. It shows a world debt clock. When I started writing my post the current global public debt was at

US $ 052,129,026,028,783

now that I finished it it's at

US $ 052,129,710,433,771

this adds up to  US $ 684,404,988 debt increase...

in about two hours...

Well, I talked to Henry today and asked him whether he knows who the world is in debt to and he confirmed that we're in debt to each other.

The point, why my circle-theory doesn't work is...

*drumroll*

...interest!

The thing is that countries and banks and whoever is involved lend money to other countries, but they all charge different interest rates. This creates an awful lot of fictional money (as we learned ;) ) and that's why it all just doesn't work out the way it should.