Henry Imler January 12th, 2007

Don’t China and Japan own most of our debt? Isn’t that how our world is going to come crashing down in a few years?

Check out the real numbers: The Skeptical Optimist :: Pie Chart of Who Owns the Debt, and Bar Chart of Who’s Been Buying It

In that environment, it’s tough to figure out who we’re
supposed to be scared of, isn’t it? I gave up a long time ago; I’m just
grateful they’re helping (indirectly) to fund our economy’s growth, and
helping (indirectly) to keep our tax rates lower than they’d otherwise
have to be to keep our debt burden (debt-to-GDP ratio) from growing.
(Thank you, foreigners! Maybe you should consider immigrating…)

In any case, the two biggest groups of T-bond buyers swamped
everybody else (see the two longest bars at the top of the chart).
Those two groups are made up of you, me, our families, our friends, and
our neighbors.

That gives me an idea: Let’s keep our economy growing, and let’s
keep buying those T-bonds for our children and grandchildren, how about
it?

Don’t get me wrong, I hate the national debt. But just perhaps the sky is not yet falling. What I dislike the most is the percentage of the debt to the GDP:

However, the SO reminds his readers to note the following:

[P]lease don’t miss the most important fact on the
History chart—the moral, which is this: Economic growth reduces the
debt burden. That’s a fact, not an opinion.

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