All Your Debt Are Belong To Us

I saw this back cover of the Newsweek magazine, and it had its intended effect. Buying the magazine?, no not that effect; the effect of being shocked and slightly outraged at being almost completely owned by foreign interests. I took pictures with my camera phone, but I like these much better from stinkyjournalism.org.


I've been sounding my own personal alarm bell at how much of our debt the Chinese own. I'm firmly convinced they mean us no good, but are just biding their time. The numbers are kind of revealing. Out of our $11 trillion debt these countries own:

• China ($768 billion)
• Japan ($687 billion)
• Caribbean banking centers (Bahamas, Bermuda, British VI, Caymen Islands, Netherland Antilles, Panama – $214 billion)
• France, India, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Turkey ($204 billion)
• Oil exporters (Algeria, Bahrain, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Venezuela – $192 billion)
• Russia ($138 billion)
• United Kingdom ($128 billion)
• Brazil ($127 billion)
• Egypt, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Thailand ($124 billion)
• Luxembourg ($106 billion)
• Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sweden ($90 billion)
• Hong Kong ($79 billion)
• Taiwan ($75 billion)
• Switzerland (68 billion)
• Germany ($55 billion)
• Ireland ($55 billion)
• All others ($156 billion)

This is what we call very bad. A slightly closer look, however, reveals that foreign entities all together (only!) own $3.3 trillion of our debt; the remaining $7.7 trillion is held by U.S. entities. Although this is still a stinking lot of money to owe anybody, 70% is still held domestically. That reduces the picture from "very bad" to "not good".


If you owe somebody a lot of money, then he calls the shots. This is something that Ireland and (gag) future EU president Tony Blair are about to find out since they recently ratified the EU Lisbon treaty. This is also something that the U.S. may find out the hard way. Regardless of who holds the debt, foreign or domestic interests, debt is not a good thing; debt kills. That is why the current spending habits of the Administration are so reckless. Spend, spend, spend, without a hope of ever paying it back. Already our grandchildren owe X amount of dollars, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Only problem is, yadda eventually will go from words and abstract concepts to real world hardship for real persons.