btw,
** JeffOlson, ** while Clinton was in office the debt doubled.
ok, that was the same link as in the OP. try this one:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto4.htm
All I know is our budget surplus was appropriated by Congress and we were told it was to balance the budget. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn it was for their damn raises! At least we’re now a quasi-independent entity and Congress isn’t allowed anywhere near our budget surpluses any more.
According to the link in the OP $3,418,333,971,222.04 of the debt is debt held by the public. In the FAQ it states debt held by the public are bonds of various types. According to my math that is over 50% of the national debt. That means we cannot owe MOST of the money to OPEC. Most of the money is owed to the public and the rest is owed to OPEC, Germany, Japan, etc.
thank you for the correction mdc1823
Oy. Some General Answers:
The “public” portion of the debt is the part which “OPEC” or whatever foreign bugaboo might have a piece of. The “Intergovernmental” portion is held primarily by Social Security and similar.
Of the public part, you can find a table of who owns the debt on page four of this PDF file. Total foreign ownership of U.S. debt in September 2001 was $1.2 trillion.
FYI, the largest subcategory of this, IIRC, was foreign central banks, who woke up one morning in the late-90’s and realized that their gold wasn’t sending them any interest. After that, it’s large foreign banks with large U.S. dollar exposures (Japanese and European, primarily).
Whilst some not-small part of the debt may be owed to OPEC member states or to companies or individuals influential in those states, I seriously doubt that the treasury owes “OPEC” a single penny. It’s a cartel, not a company, and has no needs for assets of its own.
thanks manhattan.
umm, I guess when i said OPEC I meant all the companies who make up the company that we buy oil from (it was quicker to type) picky picky. . .