There’s a puzzling statement in Paul Krugman’s most recent column (available online by subscription only):

And America’s foreign debt, including the value of foreign-owned businesses, is at least $1 trillion more than the official numbers say.

What sense does it make to include the value of foreign-owned businesses as part of America’s foreign debt? Debt means an obligation to fork over specified amounts of cash at specified future dates. If I sell my pizzeria to a Canadian, that doesn’t oblige me or any other American to fork over cash on future dates.

Adding the value of foreign-owned businesses to the value of foreign-owned debt makes for a bigger and scarier number, I suppose, but it’s a bogus number.