WHO IS THE CREDITOR?

Below are excerpts from THE GRIP OF DEATH, A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics by Michael Rowbotham. Please, keep in mind that this book was published in 1998, so the statistics are from back then.
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‘The Grip of Death’ is a literal translation of ‘mortgage’, when the owner of a house pledges his or her house to another with a handshake…until death.

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For example, every country in the world suffers from a massive and constantly increasing national debt. Britain has a national debt that is fast approaching L400 billion. Canada's debt has reached $650 billion and Germany's now exceeds 500 billion deutschmarks. So are these poor countries? No more so than Japan with a debt equivalent to two trillion dollars or America with a national debt now in excess of five trillion dollars. Since the poorer nations are crippled by their indebtedness to international lending institutions and foreign banks, the overall picture is of a world suffering acute and ever worsening insolvency.

But this is really quite illogical and absurd... The question almost asks itself. If all the nations of the world are in debt, who are they in debt to? Rationally, where there is a debtor, there should be someone else who is a creditor. If every nation is in debt, who, precisely, owes whom?