All US "debt" is in Treasury bills, T- bills for short. These are essentially bonds. The US Treasury prints these bonds (basically IOU'S) to the Federal Reserve and the Reserve allows the Treasury to print the equivalent amount of cash. The T-bills are sold to investors as a fixed interest bearing instrument. These have been considered guaranteed interest bearing notes that 401k's, equity firms, countries with volatile currency, etc to safely store their money as a portion of their investment portfolio. The primary holders of T-bills are mostly US citizens through their retirement accounts. A percentage of retirement investment accounts have some portion of their savings in T-bills to counter balance volatility of the markets. China and Japan are the two largest foreign investors of T-bills. About 7 trillion in total is owned by foreign nations. https://www.statista.com/statistics/246420/major-foreign-holders-of-us-treasury-debt/. Neither China nor Japan hold over a trillion of these securities.
$33,000,000,000,000 in debt to who, exactly?
All US "debt" is in Treasury bills, T- bills for short. These are essentially bonds. The US Treasury prints these bonds (basically IOU'S) to the Federal Reserve and the Reserve allows the Treasury to print the equivalent amount of cash. The T-bills are sold to investors as a fixed interest bearing instrument. These have been considered guaranteed interest bearing notes that 401k's, equity firms, countries with volatile currency, etc to safely store their money as a portion of their investment portfolio. The primary holders of T-bills are mostly US citizens through their retirement accounts. A percentage of retirement investment accounts have some portion of their savings in T-bills to counter balance volatility of the markets. China and Japan are the two largest foreign investors of T-bills. About 7 trillion in total is owned by foreign nations. https://www.statista.com/statistics/246420/major-foreign-holders-of-us-treasury-debt/. Neither China nor Japan hold over a trillion of these securities.