
Foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities - abhisekumar
http://money.cnn.com/infographic/news/economy/who-we-owe/index.html
======
aaronbrethorst
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](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.

~~~
miles
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](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05YfP_8UsU)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#Foreign_holdings)

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

~~~
Fuxy
And while everybody is arguing about China nobody notices the small little
island called Japan owning almost as much as China while allegedly having a
very unhealthy economy.

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vacri
_" 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.

~~~
dirktheman
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.

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

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frank_boyd
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".

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

~~~
nordsieck
The real reason is that China has, for a long time (not any more... sort of),
had a policy of pegging the Yuan to the Dollar. In order to do this, they
needed to buy a lot of Treasuries.

~~~
marcamillion
Even if they didn't peg to the dollar....where else are they going to put all
that cash? They already own as much of the other commodities as they can get
their hands on.

Ultimately, they want to protect the surpluses they have accumulated. What
better way to do that than put it in the safest security in the world - well
to date anyway.

Sucks to be them though....they have no choice but to keep buying Treasuries.

This is the point that many people miss. Yes...America is indebted to
China...but it's really China that is more at the mercy of America.

If they leave their cash in cash, inflation will kill them over the long term.
They can't realistically own 100% of all the commodities...and if they did
that would be self-defeating because the price would plummet over time because
people would find something else to replace the scarce commodities so their
holdings would become worthless.

So their prudent management of their economy has given them a cash pile that
no one else can rival, and has put them at the mercy of the largest debtor
nation on the planet.

~~~
XorNot
Its the old "if you owe the bank $10,000 you've got a problem...if you owe the
bank $10 million the bank has a problem".

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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.

~~~
itafroma
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.

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mytoaster
Monthly data from the treasury: [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-
chart-center/ti...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-
center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt)

Foreign net purchases of US long-term debt: [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/data-chart-center/ti...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-
chart-center/tic/Documents/snetus.txt)

More info: [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-
center/ti...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-
center/tic/Pages/ticsec.aspx)

Debt held by public is $11.918T.

China owns 10.7% of all treasury debt, Japan 9.5%, and all foreigners hold
46.9%. I imagine we're making the world a little nervous right now.

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SuperChihuahua
According to Wikipedia, the combined total public debt is $16.805 trillion:

\- Debt held by the public: $11.959 trillion. $5.6 trillion or approximately
47% of the debt held by the public is owned by foreign investors (the
discussed article)

\- Intragovernmental holdings: $4.846 trillion

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bdcravens
isn't "we" in the title a bit US-centric? (realize it's the original page's
title, but probably deserves an edit when submitted to an external site like
HN)

edit: original title of submission was "Who we owe"

~~~
cperciva
Given the cnn.com domain name, I think it's pretty clear who "we" refers to.

~~~
mrweasel
I honestly assumed that it was an article about who CNN owes money.

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oleganza
When government pays the debt with paper issued as a result of issuing more
debt, it's like AAPL paying dividends per share in newly issued shares. In
other words, it's de-facto _default_. De-jure it's not because in this case
there is no court over U.S. government to proclaim its default.

------
dutchbrit
And that's what bankrupcy looks like..:

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

~~~
dutchbrit
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%.

~~~
oijaf888
I don't think that changes the fact that having debt != default.

I have a mortgage for a multiple of my current income, that doesn't mean I'm
bankrupt because I'm unable to pay it off right now if demanded by the lender.
Same thing with Social Security, if we had to suddenly pay out the entire
amount tomorrow to everyone, yes we would be bankrupt but that's not how
Social Security (or I would guess 90% or more of our debt securities) work.

------
guelo
Conservative economists are constantly wrong but somehow people keep believing
them. Where's that runaway inflation that they've been predicting over and
over again for years?

In any case, the US cannot default on its debt because it is denominated in US
dollars, and we can always print more dollars. That is unless Tea Party
extremists force us to jump off that cliff.

~~~
grey-area
_In any case, the US cannot default on its debt because it is denominated in
US dollars and we can always print more dollars._

There's a name for that solution - it's called a soft default, and it's not a
new idea. Clearly there is a limit to this, or politicians wouldn't bother
with a budget or taxes at all - they'd just print money as required. It
dilutes the value of existing currency and is a dangerous game which is not
sustainable. Kingdoms and empires which have devalued their currency (and many
have tried) have always paid for it in the end, with interest. It also
punishes the poor disproportionately with inflation - which doesn't have to be
hyperinflation to be damaging if it is sustained.

So anyone suggesting it should also be suggesting a way to balance the budget
and get back to a sane monetary policy. That's not hard though - the US spends
a lot on military budgets (much more than any other country in the case of the
military), pensions and healthcare. You might argue how to cut and how fast,
but there is a lot which could be done if necessary. Printing money is not a
solution, it's just a stop-gap to avoid a hard default.

~~~
venomsnake
Inflation doesn't punish the poor. It punishes the savers.

Balanced budget/deficit/surplus are tools and not goals. When the business
don't/can't spend it is the government job to pick up the slack (deficit). And
when business is investing it makes sense for the government to not compete
for the same capital and labor with the private sector (balanced/surplus).

~~~
grey-area
There are different kinds of inflation of course, and if you have high wage
inflation then the poor won't really be punished more than others, but asset
inflation and the early stages of inflation (as we have seen in this
particular crisis) do punish the poor, who in general don't have:

savings in assets other than cash

the flexibility to switch between asset classes to avoid inflation

large assets

large debts secured on assets

On top of that, too much inflation (asset or wage) does hurt everyone just as
deflation does, so it is a balancing act, and simply printing more money
whenever it is required is not a balanced policy. I don't agree with the
current shutdown or manufactured crisis, but that's not an excuse to present
money-printing as the magic solution to all government funding problems.

 _Balanced budget /deficit/surplus are tools and not goals_

I disagree with that. It's fine to act in a counter-cyclical way as you have
laid out above, and naively aiming for a balanced budget at all times would of
course be damaging, but I do think a balanced budget and low inflation should
be the explicit long-term goal of governments - otherwise the temptation is
always to inflate their way out of difficulty, to start endless wars and never
to pay down debts. If a crisis is required to borrow more, they'll invent one
to do so.

