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Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

money.cnn.com

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Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#11

Post by dirktheman »

vacri wrote: post #5

"United Kingdom includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man" Well, I'm glad they specified that! Though I am left wondering if the total for France includes New Caledonia... and of course, it's something of a travesty that they didn't indicate whether or not the total for Russia includes the Kaliningrad oblast.

Yes, strange and inconsistent indeed. They also didn't specify wether 'The Netherlands' included the Dutch Caribbean or not. On a side note, I think that 80% of the Dutch don't know the difference between 'England' and 'UK'. I hear 'Im flying to Edinburgh tomorrow. England rocks!' all the time.

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#12

Post by miles »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #7

Meanwhile, at the end of 2011, 54% of US T-bills were still held by domestic entities: http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/longterm/debt/ownership.html edit: and it appears that China holds 22.6% of 46%, or (unless my math is horribly wrong) only about 10% of total US debt. Which, in the grand scheme of things, really isn't that much.

Exactly. Though the CNN chart looks super cereal[1], China only owns about 8% of the US debt as of 2011[2]. Of course, that's not to say we don't have an addiction to cheap credit in this country[3].

EDIT: The parent post was edited to add the China info, making this one largely moot. Leaving here for the links (sorry about the first one ;-)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05YfP_8UsU

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_Sta...

[3] http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#13

Post by itafroma »

The title is incredibly misleading and relies on understanding what "foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities" in the description means and placing it in context: it's a small subset to the national debt.

The vast majority of the national debt is actually "owed" to Americans: individual and institutional American investors, the Federal Reserve, the Social Security trust fund, and federal pensions. Only about 37% of the national debt is held by foreign investors.

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#15

Post by itafroma »

itafroma wrote: post #13

The title is incredibly misleading and relies on understanding what "foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities" in the description means and placing it in context: it's a small subset to the national debt. The vast majority of the national debt is actually "owed" to Americans: individual and institutional American investors, the Federal Reserve, the Social Security trust fund, and federal pensions. Only about 37% o…

Er, rather, the original title, "Who we owe" was misleading. Apparently I can't edit or delete my comment anymore, even though it was only posted 6 minutes ago.

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#17

Post by jimworm »

dirktheman wrote: post #11
vacri wrote: post #5

"United Kingdom includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man" Well, I'm glad they specified that! Though I am left wondering if the total for France includes New Caledonia... and of course, it's something of a travesty that they didn't indicate whether or not the total for Russia includes the Kaliningrad oblast.

Yes, strange and inconsistent indeed. They also didn't specify wether 'The Netherlands' included the Dutch Caribbean or not. On a side note, I think that 80% of the Dutch don't know the difference between 'England' and 'UK'. I hear 'Im flying to Edinburgh tomorrow. England rocks!' all the time.

80%? Are you sure it's not 60%, the percentage that's not in Holland?

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#18

Post by gravitystorm »

vacri wrote: post #5

"United Kingdom includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man" Well, I'm glad they specified that! Though I am left wondering if the total for France includes New Caledonia... and of course, it's something of a travesty that they didn't indicate whether or not the total for Russia includes the Kaliningrad oblast.

It's worth specifying that if they've lumped them in with the UK, since the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man aren't actually part of the UK. Heck, they aren't even part of the EU either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isle...

Wikipedia has a nice Euler diagram and the full nitty gritty details.

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#19

Post by dutchbrit »

kllrnohj wrote: post #14
dutchbrit wrote: post #10

And that's what bankrupcy looks like..:

No, bankruptcy would be if we default. Having debt != being bankrupt.

This is from last year, but:

The government has an “official” debt of $15.8 trillion and mounting. But wait, there’s more. This doesn’t include the liability from Social Security and Medicare. When you factor these in, the amount according to some, exceeds $120 trillion. With U.S. Federal tax revenue of just over $2.3 trillion, that puts our debt-to-income ratio somewhere around 5,082%.

Re: Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities

#20

Post by mmanfrin »

frank_boyd wrote: post #16

I don't understand why China (and Japan) did get into this so lightheartedly. I mean, the devaluation strategy applied by the US has been obvious for so long now. I'm actually surprised to not see some kind of "bank run".

Where's a better place for they to put their money/all those dollars coming in from exporting to the US?
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