from Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 1/23/14
During the current financial crisis, government debt levels across the advanced capitalist world have soared. In the United States, the portion of the federal debt ‘held by the public’ has more than doubled from 36 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 73 per cent in 2012. This explosive increase in the federal debt raises an important question that strikes at the heart of the future of the US political economy: who is buying this huge and growing mountain of US Treasury securities?
