Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Which Foreign Countries Own the US Debt?

pie chart of debt
After a dinner conversation, I was interested to know exactly which countries own the US foreign debt. I went the the treasury's website and created the above chart. China is now the largest [foreign] owner of US debt with 682 billion, followed closely by Japan with 577 and the United Kingdom good for 360 billion. Interesting that Japan owns almost as much as China, but we hear so little about Japan.
The total US Debt in November of 2008 was about 10.6 Trillion, so the foreign ownership is 28%. Is this a good thing?

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

US Debt Approaches 10 Trillion Dollars

Our national debt is approaching 10 Trillion dollars. That's 30,000 dollars for every man woman and child in the united states. A nice chart showing the growth of the debt is here.
Half a trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan certainly have not helped.
Here's a list of our foreign friends who finance 2.2 Trillion of our habit:
2007-10-03-WhoOwnsNationalDebt.png
Data from http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt.