[Levin]

https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-...bt-3306124

US is an anomaly and we cannot just look at its external debt because FED owns a lot of the debt. The FED owns over 8 trillion USD debt according to the article athough it should not hold any debt. It happened because:

As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve is in charge of the country's credit. It doesn't have a financial reason to own Treasury notes. So why does it?


The Federal Reserve actually tripled its holdings between 2007 and 2014. The Fed had to fight the 2008 financial crisis, so it ramped up open market operations by purchasing bank-owned mortgage-backed securities. The Fed began adding U.S. Treasurys in 2009. It owned US$1.6 trillion, by 2011, maxing out at US$2.5 trillion in 2014.

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The Fed purchased Treasurys from its member banks, using credit that it created out of thin air. It had the same effect as printing money.

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The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said the Fed would begin reducing its Treasury holdings in 2017. But it purchased Treasurys again just a few years later.

On March 15, 2020, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase US$500 billion in U.S. Treasurys and $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities over the next several months.7 The FOMC expanded QE purchases to an unlimited amount on March 23, 2020.8 Its balance sheet had grown to US$8.76 trillion by May 2021 (Levin's Note: should be bigger by now).