The United States, and its coherent citizens in general, live in debt, lots of it.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. federal government was more than $19 trillion dollars in debt as of March 31, 2016. Yes, trillion with a “t.” Who do we owe the money to?

The largest portion is to American citizens and U.S. entities — more than $14 trillion. That figure is made up of securities like Treasury bills, notes, bonds and savings bonds. Thank goodness, we basically owe most of it to ourselves. But there’s still 5 trillion in real debt.

It consists of foreign holders, beginning with China at more than $1.15 trillion.

Japan is a close 2nd, holding more than $1.13 trillion.

Ireland is next, owning more than $270 billion of U.S. debt.

The Cayman Islands is number 4 with more than $260 billion.

And Brazil comes in 5th at more than $258 billion.

I got interested in this subject because I was always paranoid about how much this country, and we collectively as ordinary citizens, owe others in debt. Then I asked myself: Are we the only “spoiled brats” on earth who are living off the future of our descendants? So I spent some time researching on the Internet to see if our creditors also owe other countries money. They sure do!

Before you believe everything I say on this “report,” you should bear in mind the following warnings:

1. This writer knows very little about international economics. My formal training was a mere three or four classes of basic economics in college a long, long time ago. I stopped taking any more advanced classes in the subject because I found myself lacking in aptitude in that elusive branch of knowledge.

2. The data above is from all sorts of sources on the Internet. And you know how funky information can be from there. (Just think about all the quacky remedies for every kind of incurable disease that you can uncover in cyberspace.)

3. Even if the data above is really from official sources such as a country’s public records, you know how “reliable” the latter can be.

Well, with a few exceptional countries or political territories who are net credit nations – i.e., they lend more money to other nations than they borrow from them, such as China, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and a handful others, it seems that the world flourishes and strives on debts. There are about 195 countries in the world. I could only find about 22 of them in the black in terms of lending minus borrowing.

Here is one question that I absolutely have no clue how to answer, and I hope you do: How do we go on living this way without hurting our children, and their children?

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