US debt holders for the record

March 2, 2009

As is the custom about these matters there is plenty of misleading hysteria floating about about the size of American debt and the country's "dependence " on foreign savers to finance the debt. As of February, 2009 there was a total of 10,877 billion dollars of US debt outstanding. A total of 3076.9 billion was held by foreign non residents or 28 %.

Of this amount as of December 2008 the Chinese held just 6 % of the debt outstanding, the Japanese just 5 %, the oil exporting countries principally the Gulf states plus Libya,Nigeria,Ecuador , Venezuela and Nigeria held 1 % and the Caribbean banking centres in the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Cayman islands the Dutch Antilles and Panama about 1 %.

All the other foreign holders held much less than that including the U.K., Brazil, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, India, Italy, and France. intergovernmental holdings of the debt amounted to 4,297 billion or close to 40 %.So there is no large problem for the US to continue to finance its debt for the forseeable future.

The data courtesy of the U.S. Treasury is reproduced below.

US federal debt outstanding owed to foreign non residents as of December 2008 by country in billions of $ U.S.

China         727.4
Japan         626
Carib.
banking
centres       197.5
Oil
exporters     186
U.K.           130.9
Brazil         127.0
Russia         116.4
Luxembourg 97.4
Hong Kong   77.2
Taiwan         71.8
Switzerland   62.3
Germany       56.1
Ireland         54.3
Singapore     40.8
Mexico         34.8      
Thailand       32.4
Korea           31.3
Turkey         30.8
India           29.2
Norway         23.1
Israel           18.8
Egypt           17.2
France         16.8
Italy           14.6
Belgium       13.2
Netherlands 15.4
Chile           15.2
Sweden       12.7
Philipines     11.7
Colombia     11.1
All other       173.1

Grand total 3076.9 out of 10,887 billion of total US debt as of Feb 27, 2009.