And Japan is the majority holder of US debt........... The US government is out of control.

Originally posted by Zosynspiracy
And Japan is the majority holder of US debt........... The US government is out of control.

Is that true? I always thought China was the primary debt holder. Either way, not good.

Japan is completely dependent on exports to the U.S. and the U.S. controls Japan's oil supply, thereby having "veto" power of its economy. That's why Japan has to buy U.S. treasury notes. But since the U.S. is now so poor -- as so much manufacturing went to Asia -- we are not able to buy enough Japanese imports.

I read a couple of weeks back that China was offloading U.S. Debt to Japan, thus making Japan the number 1 holder of U.S. Debt at the time.

this occurance in japan is called a demographic time bomb. the end result of not having kids is that eventually your economy will collapse and in bad fasion. its going to get interesting on the global scene once it comes into full fruition

From today [11 Apr 2010] :

1 Japanese yen = 0.010743 U.S. dollars

7.5 million yen ~= $75,000 USD

which is not that far from our individual per capita public debt.

Last i heard we have about $36,000 USD [in the United States] of public debt, but it is probably worse than that if you account for everything.

<------ Not worried.

First and foremost because while public debt is high in Japan, private (household debt) is very low. With a lot of my colleagues (aged 35-50), the norm tends towards NO household debt. Corporate debt also remains very low, and there's a significant current account surplus that will prevent default.

For the doomsday scenario predicted in the article to come to pass, ie a collapse of the bond markets, Japan would be one of the last to fall - it would hit a lot of other economies sooner and harder. it would hurt here, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Originally posted by ventian

Originally posted by Zosynspiracy
And Japan is the majority holder of US debt........... The US government is out of control.

Is that true? I always thought China was the primary debt holder. Either way, not good.

No.. the US Federal Reserve is the largest official debt holder (which translates into the US printing money)

After that US Financial Institutions are the largest debt holders, specifically insurance corporations (hence why the new health care bill forces you to buy insurance from a corporation and not the Government... it's a secret tax)

After that I believe it's a close call between Investment funds (mutual, money market, hedge, investment banks etc) and Japan. China WAS the largest FOREIGN holder of debt, but recently sold a rather large sum to Japan. It then goes Japan, China, Germany if I remember correctly.

Also Japanese accounting is very different from Western accounting.. for instance we see them as having had no economic growth for over 10 years now.. even while their corporations posted massive profits.. their way of playing with numbers if something not seen anywhere else.. and it magnifies the "bad news" so to speak. Granted they are still in bad shape, and their currency has gained to much ground against competitors lately, but I don't think it's as bad as we think. They unlike countries like Greece and Iceland actually produce anyways.

[edit on 4/12/2010 by Rockpuck]

The US debt is held by Japan and the UK and the "Cayman Islands"

If they're counting that on their assets book. And then all their own debt on liabilities then you get some real idea of how messed up things are.

Toxic assets leveraged on Toxic assets.