Have you ever heard of the island nation of Palau?  I hadn’t either until a friend of mine told me he was heading there for vacation.  I consulted Wikipedia to learn more about the place and came away with the following interesting tidbits:

• It’s one of the youngest (independence gained in 1994) and least populated (20,000 people) countries in the world.
• It’s located 2000 miles south of Tokyo and 500 miles east of the Philippines.
• Hobbits may have once lived there.
• It served as the location for the reality TV show Survivor twice.

Interested in learning about how indebted our world has become?  Check out the Global Debt Comparison over at The Economist for some sobering insights into our monetary condition that are updated real-time.  As of this writing, total global public debt was roughly $35.1 trillion.  And counting.  Public debt as a percentage of GDP in the U.S. was 48.2%, which compares favorably with nations like Japan (185.4%), Greece (98.2%) and France (74.9%) but unfavorably to countries like Australia (17.2%) and China (17.9%).  Move the clock ahead to 2011 and our level jumps to 66.4%.  Doh!  Oh well, at least it’s still not near as bad as Japan (205%!!!).