Inside the U.S. Debt Bubble

Any business or organization that depends on the charity of others is vulnerable to that charity being withdrawn.

The U.S. debt outstanding is just under $12 Trillion dollars.

Roughly 43% of that debt has a maturity of less than one year according to The Economist.

This equates to $5.16 trillion that needs to be rolled over or approximately $100 billion every week.

If one assumes that the maturity of foreign holders is equivalent to the average maturity outstanding, then the U.S. and the world are playing a large game of chicken.

The Treasury currently has the luxury of cheap money 3.5% on the 10 year and 4.40% on the 30 year, but can't be seen to go too far out on the curve in future issuance (as it might kill the golden goose), but the rate of rollovers and amount of debt issuance is most likely to be stimulating in the next few quarters, pun intended.

In case you are wondering about who plays the world's largest game of chicken with us, here is the data from the Treasury of Foreign US Debt Holders.

I would recommend reading Nial Fergusson's The Cash Nexus to see how this game of chicken has usually played out in the previous 300 years of debt and empire, then reach your own conclusions.

China or Japan doesn't have to sell debt to crash the price; they merely stop showing up at the auctions for a year and roughly half of the debt expires, with payments due. As Japanese or Chinese populists, it is a tough message to swallow, that you can't stimulate your own economy, because, there is some requirement to purchase more debt.

And yes, Japan is in the same boat, just 20 years ahead of us. It looks to be race to see whose bubble pops or melts first, the Japanese with a debt to GDP ratio of 190% or the U.S. with a current debt to GDP ratio of roughly 80% but a legislated ratio almost 4 times that.

He who pays the piper calls the tune, and the music is starting to change.