In general, I agree. In this case, the percent-of-GDP approach used by the Economist is probably a good one, because (1) it relies on high-quality data (the Ba

In general, I agree. In this case, the percent-of-GDP approach used by the Economist is probably a good one, because (1) it relies on high-quality data (the Bank of England, founded in 1694, provides GDP data going back three centuries[1]), and (2) it measures the bond's size in relation to the size of Britain's overall economy, which intuitively makes more sense for financial-market figures. [1] http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Pages/onebank/threecenturies.aspx http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Pages/onebank/threec...