Major Foreign Holders of U.S. Treasuries: now with greater country breakouts

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES (in billions of dollars)

Don’t have a lot to say except to note that previous versions of this table lumped together “Oil Producers” and “Caribbean Banking Centers” while this disaggregates them. This leaves the Cayman Islands in third place at $265 bn while putting Saudi Arabia down to 13th with $116 bn.

Also of interest is how many of the top twelve are known banking centers and tax havens. Ireland (#4) isn’t holding $266 bn on its own account, Great Britain (#7) includes Crown Dependencies like the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man and we have our old friends Switzerland (#5) and the BeNeLux countries: Belgium (#11), Netherlands (#25), Luxembourg(#8). This is important because an unknown percentage of those ‘foreign’ holdings are actually the accounts of U.S. citizens and corporations.

FYI