{"id":37974,"date":"2018-09-19T07:28:38","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T12:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37974"},"modified":"2018-09-19T07:28:38","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T12:28:38","slug":"who-bought-the-1-47-trillion-of-new-us-national-debt-over-the-past-12-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37974","title":{"rendered":"Who Bought the $1.47 Trillion of New US National Debt over the Past 12 Months?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2018\/09\/18\/who-bought-1-47-trillion-of-new-us-national-debt-past-12-months\/\">Who Bought the $1.47 Trillion of New US National Debt over the Past 12 Months?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>China, Japan, other foreign investors, the Fed, US government funds? Nope.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Foreign private-sector investors and \u201cforeign official\u201d investors \u2013 central banks, governments, etc. \u2013 whittled down their holdings of US Treasury Securities by $21 billion at the end of\u00a0 July, compared to a year ago, to $6.25 trillion, according to the Treasury Department\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/ticdata.treasury.gov\/Publish\/mfh.txt\">TIC data<\/a> released Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Over the same period, the US gross national debt \u2013 fueled by a stupendous spending binge and big-fat tax cuts \u2013 soared, despite a booming economy, by a brain-wilting $1.468 trillion, in just 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>So, with foreigners having shed $21 billion over the 12-month period, who bought this $1.468 trillion in new US Treasury debt?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here\u2019s who didn\u2019t buy:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s holdings of marketable Treasury securities have remained roughly stable despite the arm-wresting match over trade, with its holdings at the end of July, at $1.17 trillion, up $4.7 billion from a year earlier.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ntv1047604-266465-84388\" class=\"ntv-moap ntv1047604-266465-84388\">\n<div class=\"ntv-start\">\n<p>Japan\u2019s holdings fell by $78 billion year-over-year to $1.035 trillion, continuing the trend since the peak at the end of 2014 ($1.24 trillion):<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44744\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/US-treasury-holdings-China-Japan-2018-07.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"416\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Russia, always a smallish holder of Treasuries compared to China and Japan, has liquidated 90% of its holdings, bringing them from $153 billion in May 2013 to just $14.9 billion in July:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44745\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/US-treasury-holdings-Russia-2018-07.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"488\" height=\"419\" \/><\/p>\n<p>China and Japan have long played an outsized role as creditor to the US government. But their importance has been declining for years due to the growing pile of the US debt, and the simultaneous decline of their holdings. This caused their combined holdings (green line) to drop from nearly 13% of total US government debt at the end of 2015 to 10.4% in July, with Japan\u2019s holdings (blue line) accounting for 4.9%, and China\u2019s (red line) for 5.5%:<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who Bought the $1.47 Trillion of New US National Debt over the Past 12 Months? China, Japan, other foreign investors, the Fed, US government funds? Nope. Foreign private-sector investors and \u201cforeign official\u201d investors \u2013 central banks, governments, etc. \u2013 whittled down their holdings of US Treasury Securities by $21 billion at the end of\u00a0 July, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,827,1576,12110,21725,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-37974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-united-states","tag-us-debt","tag-us-national-debt","tag-us-securities","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37975,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37974\/revisions\/37975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}