{"id":56835,"date":"2021-02-19T15:50:48","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T20:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56835"},"modified":"2021-02-19T15:52:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T20:52:51","slug":"who-bought-the-4-5-trillion-added-in-one-year-to-the-incredibly-spiking-us-national-debt-now-at-27-9-trillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56835","title":{"rendered":"Who Bought the $4.5 Trillion Added in One Year to the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt, Now at $27.9 Trillion?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2021\/02\/17\/who-bought-the-4-5-trillion-added-in-one-year-to-the-incredibly-spiking-us-national-debt-now-at-27-9-trillion\/\">Who Bought the $4.5 Trillion Added in One Year to the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt, Now at $27.9 Trillion?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>Someone had to buy every dollar of this monstrous debt. Here\u2019s Who. The Fed isn\u2019t the only one. But China continues to unwind its holdings.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Driven by stimulus and bailouts, and fired up by the tax cuts and by grease and pork, the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt has skyrocketed by $4.55 trillion in 12 months, to $27.86 trillion, after having already spiked by $1.4 trillion in the prior 12 months, which had been the Good Times. These trillions are all Treasury securities that form the US national debt, and someone had to buy every single one of these securities:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-68228\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-Gross-National-Debt-2011-through-2021-02-16.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 519px) 100vw, 519px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-Gross-National-Debt-2011-through-2021-02-16.png 519w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-Gross-National-Debt-2011-through-2021-02-16-260x301.png 260w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-Gross-National-Debt-2011-through-2021-02-16-160x185.png 160w\" alt=\"\" width=\"519\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So we\u2019ll piece together who bought those trillions of dollars in Treasury Securities that have whooshed by over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday afternoon, the Treasury Department released the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ticdata.treasury.gov\/Publish\/mfh.txt\">Treasury International Capital<\/a>\u00a0data through \u00a0December 31 which shows the foreign holders of the US debt. From the Fed\u2019s balance sheet, we can see what the Fed bought. From the Federal Reserve Board of Governors bank balance-sheet data, we can see what the banks bought. And from the Treasury Department\u2019s data on Treasury securities, we can see what US government entities bought.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Share of foreign holders falls to 25% for first time since 2007:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the fourth quarter, foreign central banks, foreign government entities, and foreign private-sector entities such as companies, banks, bond funds, and individuals, reduced their holdings by $35 billion from the third quarter, to $7.04 trillion. This was still up from a year ago by $192 billion (blue line, right scale in the chart below). But their share of the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt fell to 25.4%, the lowest since 2007 (red line, right scale):<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-68229\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-treasury-holdings-TIC-foreign-v-total-2021-02-16.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 505px) 100vw, 505px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-treasury-holdings-TIC-foreign-v-total-2021-02-16.png 505w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-treasury-holdings-TIC-foreign-v-total-2021-02-16-260x255.png 260w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/US-treasury-holdings-TIC-foreign-v-total-2021-02-16-160x157.png 160w\" alt=\"\" width=\"505\" height=\"496\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who Bought the $4.5 Trillion Added in One Year to the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt, Now at $27.9 Trillion? Someone had to buy every dollar of this monstrous debt. Here\u2019s Who. The Fed isn\u2019t the only one. But China continues to unwind its holdings. Driven by stimulus and bailouts, and fired up by the [&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":[195,303,379,549,1234,827,3650,2202,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-56835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-fed","tag-government","tag-national-debt","tag-stimulus","tag-united-states","tag-us-federal-reserve","tag-us-treasury","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56835","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=56835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56836,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56835\/revisions\/56836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}