Does anybody know how much of the US national debt China really owns?

[rockymountaindem]

:shrug:

[populistdriven]

1. US debt owned by foreigners is now greater than 52%, Japan is the largest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._public_debt

The U.S. public debt, commonly called the national debt or the gross federal debt, is the amount of money owed by the United States federal government. This does not include the money owed by states, corporations, or individuals. As of November 2005, the total government debt is approximately $8.0 trillion, i.e. $8,000,000,000,000 ($8.0 � 1012). This is more than ten times the amount of United States currency in circulation as of 2005, estimated to be $730 billion ($7.3 � 1011).

~snip~

The country holding by far the most debt is Japan which held $1.2 trillion at the end of March, 2005. In recent years the People's Republic of China has also become a major holder of Treasury debt, holding $223.5 billion at that time.


more here

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/10/subsidizing_us_.html

Over half of all U.S. Treasury debt is now held by overseas owners. If that makes you uncomfortable, you are not alone.

For most of recent history, foreigners holding US debt has been 20% or less. The shift began under Bill Clinton, starting around 1993, and accelerated into '94-95. When Clinton finished his 2nd term, foreign ownership of US Treasuries was about 35%.

That ownership has continued to rise under President Bush, and now stands at 52%.

more here

http://www.g2mil.com/Oct2003.htm

The only thing keeping the nation afloat is a huge trade deficit which pumps a half trillion in surplus dollars overseas, which is used to buy US treasury bonds. China/Hong Kong have $469 billion in foreign currency reserves (mostly US dollars), and lent the poor USA $41 billion last year through the purchase of US treasury bonds. China spent nearly as much on US treasury bonds as it did on its military last year, and billions of US tax dollars now flow to China as interest payments. The USA will waste $323 billion for interest in FY2004 on a $6.7 trillion national debt which will grow by another $600 billion next year

[KerryOn]

4. And when you consider all of this debt ....

.... what becomes of the United States if China decides to call in a few notes?

Consider where the United States stands in the world economy and then consider the struggle over the worlds recourses and the result is frightening.

China has us by the balls, and you can thank George Bush!

[stepnw1f]

17. Well Isn't This Nice

I keep visualizing a toilet draining when I see stuff like this. Our economy is broken.

[papau]

2. By 2015, China and Japan may be at 1.5T each, with Japan

beginning to cash in those bonds to pay for its senior citizen cost.

The Trade deficit will pass 800 B per year shortly if current trends continue.

Foreign interests now own more and more of America - they own about 44% of federal government treasury bonds. Foreigners own about "$9 trillion of U.S. financial assets, including 13% of all stocks, 13% of agencies, and 27% of corporate bonds", according to Gillespie Research/Federal Reserve. The major provider of money for home mortgages is Fannie Mae who gets that money by borrowing about a third from outside the U.S., according to Bloomberg Sept. 2002. Additionally, foreign interests own real estate and factories.

http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES
(in billions of dollars)
HOLDINGS 1/ AT END OF PERIOD

2005 2005 2005 2005 2005 2005 2005 2005 2005
Sept Aug July June May Apr Mar Feb Jan

Country
Japan 687.3 684.6 683.3 681.2 686.2 685.7 680.5 680.7 679.3
Mainland China 252.2 248.0 242.1 243.7 243.5 240.5 223.5 224.9 223.5
United Kingdom 2/ 182.4 174.2 160.0 145.5 132.5 125.2 122.2 111.6 101.1
Caribbean Banking Centers 3/ 102.9 103.4 102.9 106.8 125.5 124.6 137.2 104.7 94.2
Taiwan 71.8 71.6 72.3 71.3 70.9 70.6 71.1 68.5 68.3
Germany 63.5 65.0 61.9 61.1 61.2 60.8 56.0 53.0 53.8
Korea 61.7 59.1 59.2 59.6 58.7 55.9 57.1 53.1 53.6
OPEC 54.6 53.8 52.7 57.0 62.6 60.6 62.2 67.6 67.0
Hong Kong 48.1 47.4 48.5 48.2 47.6 47.2 45.2 45.2 45.3
Canada 47.8 48.4 46.7 43.8 41.1 42.1 38.4 38.0 35.4
Luxembourg 41.3 42.3 41.1 43.1 44.6 45.3 42.2 42.9 41.7
Switzerland 37.5 38.2 37.4 40.1 42.0 43.3 44.1 44.3 40.8
Mexico 35.0 35.8 35.0 31.9 31.2 31.6 32.5 33.0 33.5
Norway 33.4 41.8 43.8 45.3 37.7 29.8 16.9 33.8 35.1
Singapore 28.2 28.6 28.6 28.9 30.3 30.0 30.8 29.2 29.9
Brazil 26.2 23.7 23.2 20.8 16.8 16.2 14.7 13.6 13.8
France 24.3 24.2 22.1 18.9 27.9 22.2 25.0 27.0 21.0
Sweden 19.3 19.3 19.0 19.4 17.9 16.8 16.9 16.3 15.8
Belgium 16.2 16.3 16.1 15.9 15.8 15.7 15.3 16.7 16.8
Italy 15.9 16.4 15.9 14.6 14.4 14.7 14.6 13.8 13.1
India 14.5 16.7 17.6 16.1 16.9 18.0 18.3 18.1 15.9
Netherlands 13.9 14.4 15.1 14.7 15.2 17.0 18.1 16.5 16.8
Turkey 13.2 14.0 15.2 13.8 10.1 10.7 11.4 10.4 12.9
Poland 11.9 11.1 11.2 11.4 11.8 11.9 11.4 10.6 10.2
Thailand 11.2 12.2 12.1 12.8 13.3 11.1 12.1 13.0 13.3
Ireland 10.8 10.7 14.7 13.8 17.7 13.3 17.2 17.8 15.6
Israel 10.5 10.1 9.2 9.5 10.3 11.6 14.6 14.3 14.9
All other 129.9 131.8 127.3 123.4 124.6 128.6 128.3 128.4 126.5
Grand Total 2065.5 2063.1 2034.2 2012.6 2028.3 2001.0 1977.8 1947.0 1909.1

Of which:
Foreign Official 1229.8 1240.9 1235.5 1233.6 1241.7 1236.1 1227.9 1242.5 1238.3
Treasury Bills 195.4 205.4 203.2 204.9 229.0 230.1 235.8 235.5 242.6
Notes and Bonds 1034.4 1035.5 1032.3 1028.7 1012.8 1006.0 992.0 1007.0 995.7

Department of the Treasury/Federal Reserve Board
11/16/2005

1/ Estimated foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury marketable and non-
marketable bills, bonds, and notes reported under the Treasury
International Capital (TIC) reporting system are based on annual
Surveys of Foreign Holdings of U.S. Securities and on monthly data.
2/ United Kingdom includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
3/ Caribbean Banking Centers include Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman
Islands, Netherlands Antilles and Panama.

[zaj]

3. What was it when Clinton left office?

[papau]

8. It's hard to read, but best guess is Clinton's 1.57 T is now 3.01T

in terms of total Foreign owned.

China is as shown above is only a small piece - but growing very, very fast.


http://www.treas.gov/tic/ticliab.html

�
Total Liabilities to Foreigners by Type and Country



TOTAL LIABILITIES Liabilities payable in dollars
------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To foreign official
Totals institutions and To all Memoranda
---------------- foreign banks other foreigners ----------------
----------------------- ---------------------- liabili-
TOTAL Non- Non- ties Negot.
Payable Payable Banks' Cus- negot. Short- negot. Short- to CDs
in in own tody deposits term Other deposits term Other banks' held
dollars foreign lia- lia- and U.S. lia- and U.S. lia- own for all
End curren- bili- bili- broker. Trsy bili- broker. Trsy bili- foreign for-
of cies ties ties balances oblig. ties balances oblig. ties offices eigners
Cntry Month <1> <2> <3> <4> <5> <6> <7> <8> <9> <10> <11> <12> <13>
----- ----- -------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
99996 1978-04 n.a. 143,361 n.a. 66,940 76,421 17,524 58,880 22,065 30,038 12,066 286 2,502 9,587

99996 1981-01 n.a. 202,397 n.a. 122,857 79,539 22,240 57,242 32,581 70,125 15,807 432 3,970 10,267

99996 1993-01 n.a. 849,548 n.a. 594,320 255,228 116,296 123,933 197,766 319,157 57,845 9,817 24,734 9,718

99996 2000-01 n.a. 1,371,277 n.a. 972,803 398,474 102,502 171,925 289,102 611,136 94,096 10,134 92,382 28,344

99996 2001-01 n.a. 1,568,483 n.a. 1,114,561 453,922 123,283 173,874 328,002 702,127 88,069 8,590 144,538 31,389

99996 2002-01 n.a. 1,587,803 n.a. 1,111,007 476,796 91,656 178,642 328,857 721,595 94,071 12,240 160,742 22,697

99996 2003-01 n.a. 1,949,528 n.a. 1,329,469 620,059 76,241 219,353 428,512 892,233 93,681 17,722 221,786 40,303

99996 2004-01 n.a. 2,392,406 n.a. 1,745,212 647,194 711,014 231,809 883,558 125,032 27,499 413,494 1,138,617 33,258

99996 2005-01 n.a. 2,752,704 n.a. 1,936,904 815,800 780,071 266,357 927,943 147,550 45,299 585,484 1,238,237 47,294

99996 2005-09 n.a. 3,010,413 n.a. 2,248,545 761,868 873,573 218,705 1,114,433 167,282 33,227 603,193 1,507,056 51,297

[EuroObserver]

9. 'Course you folks don't plan to pay off your debts

any time real soon, right? So this is all the usual 'business as usual' fantasyland.

Interesting, though: quote:

2/ United Kingdom includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
3/ Caribbean Banking Centers include Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman
Islands, Netherlands Antilles and Panama.

That's it by way of the little regulated aka offshore world? (Just asking).

[populistdriven]

5. stunning fact: foreigners own 5x more US debt than total $$ in circulation

[sweetheart]

6. 1,200,000,000 people

have 4 times more flesh weight than 300,000,000 people. The debt is
spoken in terms of the line of credit we're hanging ourselves with,
that we bungee jump on to the sympathies of the developing world's noose.

[pushycat]

7. What? Can you explain the cryptic flesh weight point? thanks

[sweetheart]

11. Flesh weight tells the truth

That neither population is going away. And no matter the money,
its 4:1 in democracy terms... something nobody cares about any more.

"political economy". There are only people, their debts and their
inderdependent politics, one population wiser for being pilliaged by
america and britain for previous centuries. And were american pilliaged
and broken by china for 100 years, would they be as willing to run up
such a debt? Would they be so paranoid given how 1 sided this abuse
relationship is?

[ThomWV]

13. To Answer Your Question Succinctly

Yes.

If you think the Chineese are any different than the that are the Americans, the British, or anyone else in terms of their greed or misuse of resources you're nuts.

[sweetheart]

14. ok, then in that case

4 times the human footprint. At some point, the world is gonna have
to come to agree on what footprint a human is allowed, that all sustainable
industries form around this. Instead, we have a tiny americaana
designing an economy that wastes massive amounts of resources, hoping
an economy like china adopts the wasteful practices.

I can't but wonder if my grandchildren will ever see a living fish in
the ocean.

[ThomWV]

15. Try A Different Perspective

Your children's ability to eat fish will not be dependent on the numbers of fishes in the ocean.

Try not to think about it as a foot print. A man can step in dog shit just as easily as he can walk in tall clover - the footprint is the same. Try to use an old agricultural simile, "grazing capacity". It refers to how many head of cattle you can feed on an acre of land. It takes everything into account, not just the number of square feet. Pretty important distinction.

[pitohui]

10. is this bad?

it sounds like to me china and japan are now betting on success of usa for without our success they lose their investment

such interconnections may mean the end of war one day

[Yupster]

12. It is a funny thing about debt

Than when you owe money to someone, he kind of dictates what you can and can't do.

But,

If you owe a really, really lot of money to somebody, then the power returns to you as he has to agree with you to ever get any of his money back.

It's an odd phenomena.

[many a good man]

16. Its GOOD

The enormous foreign debt increases the economic interdependency among nations. All actors have a stake in maintaining prosperity in the US. Any dislocation here would have even more severe effects abroad.

It also serves to moderate US actions in the long run as mutual dependency reduces our economic hegemony and selfish policies.

It could be BAD if our partners finally tire of our mismanagement and move to knock the US off its pedestal. The calculus on their part would take into account the certainty of a painful long-term dislocation with the hopes that the new order would offer more prosperity and stability. The dislocation would probably last a generation.

It would be one of the biggest revolutions in world history and it could be won without a shot ever being fired.

The choice before the US is clear: domination or leadership. We are seeing the first choice being played out before our eyes. The road not yet traveled is true leadership-- liberalism on a global scale, entailing generosity, tolerance, innovation, and peace. It requires cooperation and reason, a strategy that has not yet been embraced on these shores.