5 Largest Holders of U.S. Treasury Securities

Image attribution: ThugVillage; public domain

Recent reports have sensationalized China's selling of U.S. Treasury's as the U.S. Department of the Treasury table below shows. The $6 billion drop from December 2010 through February, 2011 is somewhat questionable as pivotal in terms of the larger increase of $39 billion since July 2010. The 5 largest Treasury holders as of February, 2011 and not including the Federal Reserve Bank are listed below.

                 MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES       
 Source: United States Treasury

       HOLDINGS 1/ AT END OF PERIOD (Billions)

                     Feb       Jan        Dec        Nov        Oct       Sep       Aug       Jul         
Country         2011      2011    2010      2010      2010     2010     2010     2010      
                     ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------ ----  
China, ML        1154.1  1154.7   1160.1  1164.1   1175.3  1151.9  1136.8  1115.1    
Japan              890.3    885.9     882.3    875.9     873.6    860.8    832.5    817.3   
U.K.                 295.5    277.9     271.6    242.5     209.0    190.5    181.0    107.2        
Oil Exporters   218.8    215.5     211.9    204.3     207.8    215.4    211.7    209.3     
Brazil              194.3    197.6     186.1    189.8     183.0    181.0    170.5    167.7     

The U.S. Federal Reserve has bought a large amount of financial securities in the last 12 months as part of its Open Market Operations known as Quantitative Easing or QE1 and QE2. Both programs together are expected to have a total value of $1.8 Trillion by the end of June, 2011. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank held approximately $1.413 trillion in U.S. Treasury Securities on April 27, 2011. This makes the Federal Reserve Bank the largest holder of U.S. Treasury Securities.