Guess the econ stat - No cheating!

[dmallind]

No looking it up now folks.

The total US debt is give or take $12.3T


How much of that is held by China?

[Nay]

1. 30 T?

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

2. Econ Reality

When you owe the bank $100,000 the bank owns you.
When you owe the bank $100,000,000,000 you own the bank.

[tmyers09]

3. I'm gonna guess about 5.

The rest is from boneheaded spending on war.

[Robb]

4. I'm gonna guess 9.

Edited to add: Wow, I looked it up. Excellent OP.

[notesdev]

5. about $2T

[On the Road]

6. Without Looking

I would guess $3-4T.

Most of the debt is held domestically. Britian and Japan are other large holders.

[dmallind]

7. Bonus points for getting the dom/for split but no cigar on China

To give pending guessers an advantage, about 40% of the debt is owned by our own government. Yep - at least $4T is the government in debt to itself. Investors want safe returns - traditionally T-bills. These investors include Social Security etc fund managers.

Less than a third of the debt is owned by foreign entities of any kind.

[RoyGBiv]

8. I like this question ...

It and the common answers are illustrative of several things.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. Less than a trillion.

[Junkdrawer]

10. Yep. Larry Wilkerson did a speech covered by TheRealNews....

You know who holds the lion's share of the debt? Japanese housewives.

[dmallind]

12. Well not really

Until a couple of years ago Japan was indeed the biggest foreign debt owner but it was still in the $700B range. It's #2 now with the UK just behind in 3rd.

The biggest owner of US debt at a chunk over $4T is the US government (socsec and so on), but outside that it's institutional investors in the US like pension schemes, insurers and so on.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. American debt: the new Tamagocchi!

It must be nurtured!

[dmallind]

11. We have a winner.

Albeit a tad unspecific, but hey I asked for guesses.

As of last month it's just a shade under $800B.

We could pay off our entire Chinese debt for the cost of the TARP program.

And yet I read time and again how China owns us and how we would collapse if China "calls in" their debt.


Follow up Q if anybody cares to keep playing. How much of our imports come from China as a percentage?