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Visualizing America's Creditors

Tyler Durden's picture




A vivid chart from VisualEconomics, demonstrates the key US creditors and their most recently disclosed holdings. Of course, the TIC does this monthly (in a much less pretty format), but it does make for a good poster, especially if knowing off the top of your head whom the U.S. will be screwing if and when it decided to repudiate its debt, is of notable relevance . One name omitted: the United States itself, which according to the H.4.1 owns $777 billion of debt, essentially making it the second largest creditor after China. Obviously, this analysis excludes retail level and individual holders of debt.




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Tue, 01/12/2010 - 10:59 | Link to Comment TraderMark
TraderMark's picture

Just getting chuckles out of owing countries like Thailand money...

Since your education system has made the common man more of a "picture person" rather than those fancy "words", this would be an excellent handout at the local Elks club.

Anyhow... totally unrelated Jim Cramer rant from last night that less jobs = good for America.  As long as you are a speculator.

Boo yah! He is right

http://is.gd/686z0

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:06 | Link to Comment Screwball
Screwball's picture

CNBC - the Baghdad Bob of business television.  Good article though, thanks for the link.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:41 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:10 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:10 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:11 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:35 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:07 | Link to Comment CB
CB's picture

"default as a patriotic duty" as a political method to sell a free market mechanism to the mobs.  hmmm. will ponder.  will say I'm not totally on board with political rhetoric like this.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:40 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 14:08 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Wed, 01/13/2010 - 10:27 | Link to Comment Seer
Seer's picture

U S A number 1!  U S A number 1! ...

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 11:59 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 18:00 | Link to Comment Hammer59
Hammer59's picture

Quick answer to your quick question. When Bush took office in 2000, the National debt was @5 Trillion dollars, accumulated over 224 years. Eight years later, the debt had doubled to over 10 Trillion dollars.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 20:40 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Sun, 01/17/2010 - 03:33 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:19 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:30 | Link to Comment phaesed
phaesed's picture

Foreign currency reserves anyone?

 

How sad is it that Americans refuse to own our country's debt and prefer to let Obama kneel before the temple of Mao with his mouth wide open.

- Then again, I suppose Lloyd's given him plenty of practice.

 

Not much change from Bushie I suppose.

Still... a nice chart to view.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:26 | Link to Comment chumbawamba
chumbawamba's picture

Suckerz!!

I am Chumbawamba.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:37 | Link to Comment Shameful
Shameful's picture

Now I just need a listing of what funds/banks hold what amount of the debt.  Would expect to see an insane amount held by Caribbean banks, you know banks that buy far more treasuries a year then the total GDP of the island they are "located" in.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:43 | Link to Comment Shameful
Shameful's picture

And looking at this again I have to give props to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Luxembourg.  Look at how much debt of ours they hold, then realize how tiny these places really are in size and population.  We have cities in the US with more people in them then these places, which also cover a larger landmass! Hell the city I'm in right now is basically a college town and has a way bigger pop then Luxembourg!  No one can say they didn't do their part to keep the ponzi going!

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 12:59 | Link to Comment Shocker
Shocker's picture

Excellent Job on the chart! , Pretty much explains alot

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 13:25 | Link to Comment Reductio ad Absurdum
Reductio ad Absurdum's picture

One name omitted: the United States itself, which according to the H.4.1 owns $777 billion of debt

It used to be said that government debt wasn't a problem because we just owed the money to ourselves. This clearly isn't the case anymore. If you really want to scare the public straight, show them a good graphic of the increase in debt-to-foreigners vs. debt-to-ourselves. (Then again, maybe the public has become too stupid to understand the problem.)

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 13:54 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 14:04 | Link to Comment ozziindaus
ozziindaus's picture

Look at it as the cost of doing business with the US, a pay to play scheme or even an insurance policy.  

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 14:10 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 14:49 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Tue, 01/12/2010 - 14:51 | Link to Comment THE DORK OF CORK
THE DORK OF CORK's picture

Jesus , Ireland has more FRNs then France - now if we could just persuade those cheese eating surrender monkeys to exchange their gold for our holdings of the worlds reserve currency our problems could be over..........

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 15:23 | Link to Comment dark pools of soros
dark pools of soros's picture

narrow sight eh? you forget how we beat the British right?

http://people.csail.mit.edu/sfelshin/saintonge/frhist.html

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 15:25 | Link to Comment Shameful
Shameful's picture

Good luck with that.  Remember it was the French that really ran the ball to break us off the gold standard.  Turns out Charles de Gaulle trusted gold more then he did FRNs. 

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 15:41 | Link to Comment THE DORK OF CORK
THE DORK OF CORK's picture

The above remark was in jest since my political beliefs are essentially Gaullist in nature but getting back to Irish holdings of US debt - could somebody please explain where these are because our  national pension fund holds only Euro bonds and our official and other foreign assets do not come even close to the above figure.

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 16:56 | Link to Comment THE DORK OF CORK
THE DORK OF CORK's picture

I suspect that most of our "national" holdings of US debt is run through the IFSC building in Dublin but I cannot confirm this

Wed, 01/13/2010 - 10:04 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Thu, 01/14/2010 - 18:06 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Thu, 01/14/2010 - 18:47 | Link to Comment Anonymous
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Fri, 01/15/2010 - 00:04 | Link to Comment Anonymous
Fri, 01/15/2010 - 05:29 | Link to Comment Anonymous
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Fri, 01/15/2010 - 08:53 | Link to Comment Anonymous
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