Every other day we hear that the US is raising finance through means of auctioning off government bonds or US Treasury bills. I have always been
interested in who exactly buying up all of this debt.
I like many of you have read or heard, either through the forums on this site or through the media that it is the Communist giant in the east that is
devouring all of the debt. There are many theories as to why they would be doing this, one of them being that once they own the US financially they
will then claim their pound of flesh so to speak.
I was obviously highly skeptical of these theories and decided to do a little research of my own and what i found was very interesting, well to me at
least.
Firstly let me make it clear that China does not own most of US debt, in fact they only own about 1,132 Trillion USD. Even though that is a large
amount it is only seven percent of the total 16,4 Trillion Dollar debt. Actually the amount of debt that china owns has actually decreased from 1,173
Trillion in 2011 which was an all time high.
So that begs the question, Who owns the rest?
The answer: The American people do!
Taking a look at the chart above you will notice that the two largest slices of the debt pie are shared almost equally between the people and
government. Now if you are anything like me, you are wondering how is it possible that the government owes its self 31,2 percent of 16,4 Trillion
Dollars. And if that is the case why not just write off the debt that it owes its self.
The reason that this cannot be done it because that so called government money is actually tax payers money that was allocated to the social security,
unemployment and medicare trust funds. This means that the US government has auctioned 6,32 Trillion dollars of bad debt off to you via bonds or
Treasury bills without you even knowing about it. The system that you now rely on to support you during unemployment, illness and old age has become a
pit of toxic securities. I say toxic because i for one cannot see how it will ever be possible for the government to repay all of that debt.
In order to keep the war machine and corporate racket running smoothly, more and more money will have to be borrowed and more toxic securities issued.
It is safe to say that these funds will be the target of this borrowing in the future which ultimately means higher taxes and lower benefits until a
point is reached where you are paying for benefit system that you will not benefit from.
The next time one of these government bond or treasury bill auction is taking place, keep this in mind because most likely a third of all that debt
that is being auctioned off is being paid for with your blood sweat and tears.
More information can be found through the links below!
Mods please feel free to move this post if i have posted in the wrong forum.
Yahoo Finance
The American
Social Security Official Website
Treasury Bulletin