Friday, February 05, 2010

Who's Buying T-Bills??

HT: Egelhoff, linking to the Sprott Report.

There's a lotta debt-buying goin' on out there. Specifically, somebody's buying a hatload of US Treasury bills to finance (D) spending.

But who the blazes is buying it?

So to summarize, the majority buyers of Treasury securities in 2009 were:

1. Foreign and International buyers who purchased $697.5 billion.
2. The Federal Reserve who bought $286 billion.
3. The Household Sector who bought $528 billion to Q3 – which puts them on
track purchase $704 billion for fiscal 2009.

Sounds good, eh? Well.....

We must admit that we were surprised to discover that "Households" had bought so many
Treasuries in 2009. They bought 35 times more government debt than they did in 2008.

Even more mysterious is "what is 'households'"? Because as it turns out, it's not really "households"--nor is it your 401(k) or pension/profit-sharing plan.

Curiouser and curiouser, Alice.

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