Who Holds Our National Debt?

[Trench]

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...s_the_us_government_really_owe_money_2010.png

So it appears that 68.1% of the U.S. National Debt is owed to "us", while 31.9% is owed to foreign creditors.

I don't really have a point. Just found it interesting because I assumed the foreign debt ratio was higher... :00x32

 

[Lumi]

While you are thinking.....

Why in the FUCK do they keep wanting more from us? :0008

 

[Trench]

While you are thinking.....

Why in the FUCK do they keep wanting more from us? :0008

Because "they" represent corporations and corporatists who embody the fundamental flaw of capitalism - the greed of man.

 

[Lumi]

I'm going to start my country like Peter Griffin did,

what Cabinet Post would you like TF ?

 

[ssd]

I would not buy US debt with Lumi's money!

hahahaha

take a look at this chart.....

From PIMCO

Skunked

* Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security now account for 44% of total federal spending and are steadily rising.
* Previous Congresses (and Administrations) have relied on the assumption that we can grow our way out of this onerous debt burden.
* Unless entitlements are substantially reformed, the U.S. will likely default on its debt; not in conventional ways, but via inflation, currency devaluation and low to negative real interest rates.

The only way out of the dilemma, absent very large entitlement cuts, is to default in one (or a combination) of four ways: 1) outright via contractual abrogation ? surely unthinkable, 2) surreptitiously via accelerating and unexpectedly higher inflation ? likely but not significant in its impact, 3) deceptively via a declining dollar? currently taking place right in front of our noses, and 4) stealthily via policy rates and Treasury yields far below historical levels ? paying savers less on their money and hoping they won?t complain.

 

[ssd]

China used to hold the most of any one holder but the Federal Reserve has taken over with the QE1 and QE2 programs - QE2 is supposed to end in June whereby they (FED) will no longer be purchasing $100B of our own debt, monetizing it and handing the money back to the US Treasury to spend. If you look at the S&P 500 chart for the past 3 years and subsequently, overlay a chart of the FED's treasury bond holdings, they will look remarkably similar. Therefore, once the FED quits buying US Treasuries and at some point, will look to sell off it's holdings, what do you think will happen to the stock market?
It is for this reason that I see the market declining once the purchases are done in June( market should actually start to decline before the FED ends QE2 as brokers will want to get out in front of the end).....the 'recovery' will be in question and you will see QE3 ad finitum from the FED.

Buy some physical silver/gold - if QE3 comes to pass, all precious metals will be going up as will food prices and all other commodities.

 

[Duff Miver]

Interesting chart. Have you seen this fear-mongering TV ad?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYKAbRK_wKA

Mencken would be laughing his ass off -

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

 

[Trench]

I would not buy US debt with Lumi's money!

hahahaha

take a look at this chart.....

SSD... The "unfunded" SS, Medicare & Medicaid amounts. How do they arrive at those figures? In other words, by what possible method can numbers be calculated for an until-the-end-of-time scenario? Just curious... maybe I'm missing something? :shrug:

 

[ssd]

Trench:

The above four multi-trillion-dollar liability balls are staggering in their implications. Remember first of all that the nearly $65 trillion of entitlement liabilities shown above are not some estimate of future spending. They are the discounted net present value of current spending should it continue at the projected demographic rate (importantly *? it is much higher than the annual CPI + 1% used as a discounter because demand for healthcare rises much faster than inflation.) And while some would counter that Medicaid is appropriated annually and therefore requires no discounted reserve, those words would surely count as ?sweet nothings,? . The incredible reality is that the $9.1 trillion federal debt that constitutes the next-to-tiniest ball in our chart is nothing compared to unfunded Medicaid and Medicare. It is like comparing Pluto to Saturn and Jupiter.

Look at it another way and our dire situation becomes equally revealing. Suppose that the $65 trillion of entitlement liabilities were fully funded in a ?lockbox,? much like Social Security is falsely imagined to be. Just suppose. And say the cost of that funding (Treasury debt) was the same CPI + 1% that was used to produce the above discounted present value in the first place. Actually, that?s not a bad guesstimate for the average yield of all Treasury debt. If so, then the interest expense on the $75 trillion total debt would equal $2.6 trillion, quite close to the current level of entitlement spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. What do we pay now in interest? About $250 billion. Our annual ?lockbox? tab would rise by $2.35 trillion and our deficit would be close to 15% of GDP! The simple conclusion would be this: Unless you want to drastically reduce entitlement spending or heaven forbid raise taxes, you?ve got a stinker of a problem.

 

[kcwolf]

ssd, Trench's question was quite ligitimate. Basing Social Security spending at current rates is very flawed. SS needs some changes, but not based on that doomsday scenerio, and that is excactly what it is - a doomsday scenerio that will not exist.

 

[ssd]

KC - I did not think that Trench's question was illegitimate.
The answer that I gave to his question is how those numbers were accounted for.

I hope that you are correct. However, I am not counting on SS for my retirement. I do not trust the govt for much anyway and will not trust my retirement to them at all.