DonVerita
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2002
- Posts
- 575
I was only quoting foreign debt held by China and Japan since the original point being made had to do with China.I'm not sure how we read the same web page and drew two totally different conclusions. I, too, was suspicious of the 5% figure Flickerfade quoted, and ended up on Wiki trying to verify it. There's more involved, and it's worth anyone's time to check the link out.
First, foreign ownership was 44% of public debt in 2006 (higher now). The US government itself owns a little more than half of the $9.3 trillion debt. You read a Japan/China figure of 47%, but that is the percentage of foreign debt only that is owned by those two countries. I looked, but could not find the exact percentage that China owns, but it is less than Japan. The trend, however, is for more Chinese ownership and less Japanese.
Regardless of who holds how much, the bottom line is that we are in a world of hurt.