Who owns are debt

Why would the government owe money to itself? Some agencies, like the Social Security Trust Fund , take in more revenue from taxes than they need.

Rather than stick this cash under a giant mattress, these agencies invest in U. This transfers the agencies' excess revenue to the general fund, where it is spent. They redeem their Treasury notes for funds as needed. The federal government then either raises taxes or issues more debt to raise the cash. Which agencies own the most Treasury notes, bills, and bonds? Social Security, by a long shot. Treasury publishes this in its Monthly Treasury Statement.

The other large holders of debt include the Office of Personnel Management Retirement, Medicare, which includes the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund, and then cash on hand to fund federal government operations. Foreign governments hold a large portion of the public debt, while the rest is owned by U. The Treasury breaks down who holds how much of the public debt in a quarterly Treasury Bulletin. Other holders of the public debt include insurance companies, U.

The national debt held by the public is not only in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds but also in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and special state and local government series securities. If you were to add the debt held by Social Security and all the retirement and pension funds, almost half of the U.

Treasury debt is held in trust for retirement. If the U. As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve is in charge of the country's credit. It doesn't have a financial reason to own Treasury notes. So why does it? Between and , the Federal Reserve actually tripled its holdings. The Fed needed to fight the financial crisis, so in , it ramped up open market operations by purchasing bank-owned mortgage-backed securities.

In , the Fed began adding U. Learn how your comment data is processed. Table of Contents. Polarization 2. How to Depolarize 3. Identity Politics 4. Trumpish Populism 5. Socialistic Populism 6. Left Mythology 7. Radical Left Thinking 8. Social Change Policy Strategy People. Who Owns the National Debt? Clinton reduced the debt as a percent of GDP. Bush restarted the deficits with tax cuts tilted toward the rich, and then continued with Medicare D, two wars and more.

Skip to main content Try our corporate solution for free! Single Accounts Corporate Solutions Universities. As of June , Japan held United States treasury securities totaling about 1. Department of the Treasury, foreign countries held a total of 7. Of the total 7. China held 1. Japan held 1. Other foreign holders included oil exporting countries and Caribbean banking centers. In , the United States had a total public national debt of In , the total interest expense on debt held by the public of the United States reached billion U.

Total outlays of the U. By , spending will reach 5. Loading statistic Show source. Download for free You need to log in to download this statistic Register for free Already a member? Click heading to sort table. Download this data Country. We have switched off comments on this old version of the site. To comment on crosswords, please switch over to the new version to comment. Read more More from US election data. US elections data from the Guardian Datastore Latest: 13 Dec Death penalty statistics, country by country visualisation and data Next: Interactive: 4 Oct Presidential debate: which words did the candidates use?

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