As is now well-known, following the news broken first by Zero Hedge in May [8], Belgium, or rather "Belgium" (because clearly someone is using Belgian-based Euroclear as a front to cover their insatiable appetite for US paper) has emerged as the biggest buyer of US Treasurys in 2014, close to surpassing even the Federal Reserve as the biggest monetizer of the US deficit.
But what about other countries in the world, such as for example France: a country whose economy virtually everyone admits is in shambles, and yet whose bond yields have followed the rest of the world to slide to near record lows, hitting a tiny 1.70% most recently.
Here is the answer.
According to the just released balance of payments data from Japan, the top destination of Japanese offshore bond portfolio investments was.... France, followed in the #2 position by none other than the US.
[9]
Considering it is now everyone's patriotic duty to sell Treasurys (because otherwise the fabrication that the US economy is improving crashes and burns every time there is a concerted bond buying effort), one wonders how long until the US tells Kuroda and the Japanese Pension Funds that US paper is non-grata for purchases going forward.
As for France, we are confident they will gladly take every foreign bond purchaser they can find.
