Who are the major holders of debt issued by the U.S. federal government going into the summer of 2014?

The answers are revealed in the chart below!

Political Calculations observes:

On the whole, there haven’t been many changes since our previous edition. We see that the debt reported to be held by Belgium is still considerably inflated over historic levels, as this nation’s banks would appear to have acted on behalf of Russian interests seeking to place their U.S. government-issued debt holdings in non-Russian financial institutions ahead of and in the months following Russia’s actions to seize control of Crimea from Ukraine.

The direct holdings of U.S. Treasuries by Russian and Russian-based interests peaked in October 2013 at $149.9 billion and began moving out of Russia in the following months, well ahead of when Russian actions in support of separatists in Crimea and the eastern regions of Ukraine became overt.

They fell to a level of $100.4 billion in March 2014, before rebounding to $116.4 billion in April 2014 as Russia appeared to back off its direct support of the ethnic-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

In May 2014, however, the direct holdings of U.S. government-issued debt by Russian-based interests began declining again, to $111.4 billion, suggesting the anticipation of actions that would expand the conflict.

With that being the case, in addition to seeing to whom the U.S. government is beholden in sustaining its desired level of spending, monitoring the transfers of these holdings among international institutions may provide an early warning of impending overt actions by foreign interests intent on pursuing policies of aggression on the world stage.