On the inside back cover of this week’s issue of Newsweek was a graphic entitled “Who Owns the United States?”. The graphic was a picture of a buffalo sectioned off like a side of beef. You know, shoulder, loin, flank, etc… Anyway, each section represented a portion of the national debt and who owned it.
According to the US Treasury Department, our national debt (at the end of March 2009) was roughly $11 trillion dollars. Let me state that again, the national debt was approximately$11,000,000,000,000.00. That’s 11 with twelve zeros after it!
Of the approximate $11 trillion in debt, foreign ownership is about $3.3 trillion. I was somewhat surprised in seeing that number as I thought it to be much higher. Still, having almost 30% of the national debt owned by foreign individuals/governments is not a great position to be in.
Here’s the breakdown of who owns what:
- China ($768 billion)
- Japan ($687 billion)
- Caribbean banking centers (Bahamas, Bermuda, British VI, Caymen Islands, Netherland Antilles, Panama – $214 billion)
- France, India, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Turkey ($204 billion)
- Oil exporters (Algeria, Bahrain, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Venezuela – $192 billion)
- Russia ($138 billion)
- United Kingdom ($128 billion)
- Brazil ($127 billion)
- Egypt, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Thailand ($124 billion)
- Luxembourg ($106 billion)
- Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sweden ($90 billion)
- Hong Kong ($79 billion)
- Taiwan ($75 billion)
- Switzerland (68 billion)
- Germany ($55 billion)
- Ireland ($55 billion)
- All others ($156 billion)
Well, there you have it. I must admit I was pretty surprised by some of the countries listed and the amount of US debt they owned. I’d be curious to know how much “foreign aid” we’re giving to some of these same countries that own a piece of us. Isn’t that somewhat like me giving some of my money (that could be used to pay down the debt owed) away to Honda Finance and my mortgage company?
Just doesn’t make sense to me…
Seems to me that harping on about foreigners owning a bit of the US pales into insignificance compared to the balance owned by [whoever] in the US itself. Curious, well just check out the banks and the faceless individuals who own the banks. The mere fact that a bunch of individuals and corporations [the banking and financial services sector] that have never created a single dollars worth of real wealth can have acquired so much money in their pockets they can lend it to every mortgage lender in the country, every business that requires credit and eleven million, million dollars to the US government. The same system operates in every western country. It’s a sick, sick world and there’s damn all we can do about it.
By: Cliff Fraser on November 24, 2009
at 10:21 pm