USA national debt.

Factual Questions
1

Watching The daily show I think I understood that the american national debt is [large number].

  1. So who owns that debt? Not beeing an economist the “official” papers are less than helpful.

answers like “companys and foreign countries” arent helpful. Im looking for percentages here.

  1. Whats the interest rate. (as % on total debt)

  2. At some point I just presume people will stop lending money to the USA. at what point would that be. (Possibly a debate, but were in GQ here)

2

As for (1), Wikipediahas a number of nice charts.

3

perfect.
thanks yes obviously I shoulda looked at wiki first. :slight_smile:
feeling slightly moronic here.

4

The interest rate would depend on the term of the debt and its issuance. Current rates you can simply look up, that’s the ‘risk free’ US treasury rates.

The latest figures are:

US YIELD CURVE
US Benchmark Treasury Yields
Yield Indices Latest Today’s Change 1 Week
Ago 1 Month
Ag
1 Month 0.08% 0.00 0.04% 0.70%
3 Month 0.81% 0.00 0.23% 1.01%
6 Month 1.23% 0.00 0.86% 1.58%
2 Year 1.62% 0.00 1.60% 2.19%
5 Year 2.84% 0.00 2.76% 3.02%
10 Year 3.94% 0.00 3.88% 3.82%
30 Year 4.33% 0.00 4.13% 4.39%

As for 3, perhaps but that is a way off. The US is the world’s single most important (not sole but single most important) economic motor, cutting off lending would imply you think the US is going to default, implying economic catastrophe.

There are less impressive countries out there with debt levels twice that of the US. At some point that the US will end up having to pay higher rates than it is now, as buyers become wary. Any who claims to be able to predict that is blowing smoke.