Who are the major holders of debt issued by the U.S. federal government going into the summer of 2014?
On the whole, there haven’t been many changes since our previous edition. We see that the debt reported to be held by Belgium is still considerably inflated over historic levels, as this nation’s banks would appear to have acted on behalf of Russian interests seeking to place their U.S. government-issued debt holdings in non-Russian financial institutions ahead of and in the months following Russia’s actions to seize control of Crimea from Ukraine.
Tapering the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing Program
Our special area of focus on this update of our irregular series on the ownership of the U.S. national debt looks at the role of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (QE) programs as the central bank of the U.S. has gone from holding a low of $478.7 billion in U.S. government-issued debt securities on 18 June 2008 up to an astounding $2,414.8 billion on 28 May 2014. As of that date, the Federal Reserve held a a combination of $2,370.7 billion in U.S. Treasury securities and $44.1 billion in debt securities issued by other federal government agencies.
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