http://finance.yahoo.com/news/biggest-holders-of-us-gov-t-debt.html
I thought I'd post a little article detailing who actually holds the US Government debt. It shows some pretty interesting numbers. Thoughts?
...and, "About a decade ago, the total government holdings were "only" $2.5 trillion."
1. Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings
U.S. debt holdings: $6.328 trillion
2. China
U.S. debt holdings: $1.132 trillion
3. Other Investors/Savings Bonds
U.S. debt holdings $1.107 trillion
4. Japan
U.S. debt holdings: $1.038 trillion
5. Pension Funds
U.S. debt holdings: $842.2 billion
and so on...
While China, Japan and other countries are one of the major owner of the debt, the biggest debt is held by America itself. As the vast majority of debt is held by the public, the current generation is suffering but the future generation will have to deal with even more bigger debt crisis if the Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings keeps on growing.
ReplyDeleteEssentially we have taken out a loan from ourselves, or rather our grandparents and parents have taken out a loan from us and our children. I do not know that I understand the repercussions of holding a country's debt well enough to say whether it is worse to be borrowing from ourselves or from other countries. We need to get the debt under control soon, partly just because if we do not, our generation (or our children) will be left holding the bag (of IOUs) and the people who actually incurred the debts and most directly experienced their benefits will be dead or past the times in their lives when they could help pay it back.
ReplyDeleteI read in Governments vs. Markets, Tanzi talk about globalization, and how in the future, this is where we should be concerned about, not taxes and spending, “we live in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, and in one where spillovers across countries are becoming more important and visible all the time.” (Tanzi) As we can see here, we have major debt with Japan and China. Maybe Tanzi is right, we need to focus more on policies that can regulate our debt with other countries first, before we can start focusing on our own.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Maureen. Globalization is very important for the United States as we can see from the numbers. The United States has a lot to regulate both within and outside the country to better itself. It is not fair for the future generations to have already have a burden on their shoulders. This is something that has to be solved by the current generations if we wish our children to live in a stable economy.
ReplyDeleteI'm so surprised that China only holds one trillion of the debt. Media grandstanding inflates the meaning/ramifications of this number to much greater prominence than I believe it really should be. This is one 1/16th of the total debt. What I did not expect was the savings bonds to federal reserve holdings ratio. I assumed that the majority of the debt was outstanding to private investors, instead to government bodies. I found this stat: The Fed's holdings of Treasuries totaled $1.653 trillion as of Wednesday versus $1.648 trillion the previous week. (http://news.yahoo.com/u-fed-balance-sheet-grows-latest-week-203405348--business.html)and am interested to figure out where the remaing 5 trillion of that first number reside.... Its a rather misleading statistic for a number that is so very large.
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