| Chart of the Day |
| SEPTEMBER 9, 2026 |
MONEY & MARKETS |
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| Foreigners Used to Fund 49% of Our Debt. Today It’s 31%. |
| That missing 18 cents on the dollar has to come from somewhere. It’s coming out of your pocket. |
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| Foreign share of U.S. publicly held federal debt, in percent. Peaked at 49% in 2011. |
| Source: Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Congressional Research Service, 2026 |
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| The 10-year Treasury yield hit 4.79% yesterday, the highest since November 2023. Every financial reporter blamed oil, or the Fed, or the jobs report. They’re all missing the real story. |
| Here’s what most people get wrong. Foreigners used to fund almost half of the debt Washington runs up. In 2011, they owned 49 cents of every dollar. Today they own 31 cents. That gap has to be filled by somebody, and that somebody is you. |
| Look at the numbers. Publicly held federal debt has quadrupled since 2008, from $6.4 trillion to $31 trillion. Foreign holdings grew too, but nowhere near fast enough to keep up. So the shortfall lands on American banks, American pension funds, American money-market accounts, and American households. Your retirement account is a bigger buyer of Treasuries today than Japan is. |
| And here’s the part that really gets me. When the buyer of last resort becomes your neighbor instead of Beijing, the price of that debt is set by how much yield your neighbor demands. Foreigners bought at 2%. Americans want 4.8%. That’s why your mortgage sits above 6.5%. That’s why your car loan hurts. Same debt, different buyer, higher price. |
| Now stack this on top of what’s coming. Over $8 trillion of Treasuries roll over between now and year-end, and September is on pace for a record month of corporate bond issuance too. All of that paper needs a home. If Chairman Warsh raises rates next Wednesday, yields climb further. If he holds, foreign buyers stay on the sidelines and yields climb anyway. There is no easy exit from this. |
