Politifact:
So how much of the U.S. debt, exactly, does China hold? In a speech at a tea party event in Iowa on April 16, 2011, potential Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said it's 26 percent...
We e-mailed a spokeswoman at Friends of Herman Cain to substantiate the figure and did not hear back....
More than two-thirds of the debt is held by U.S. residents and institutions. When you look at everyone who holds U.S. treasury security, China's share drops to 8.1 percent ($1.15 trillion out of $14 trillion).
In other words, Cain should have dropped in some qualifiers to make his statement accurate. For example, he could have said "among the foreign holders of U.S. debt, China ranks first and holds 26 percent." But he didn't. Cain said simply that China "is holding 26 percent of our debt." There are a couple ways to consider debt, but using the two most common, Cain is either off by more than double or more than triple. We rate Cain's statement False.
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2011/may/03/terry-mcauliffe/terry-mcauliffe-says-china-owns-11-trillion-us-deb/
ReplyDeleteChina owns the highest percentage of "...The remaining debt -- about $4.64 trillion -- is held by the Federal Financing Bank, U.S. government trust funds, and other federal funds and accounts. The largest trust fund is the one that endows Social Security.
Not sure on the math but it comes close to 1/4 of the debt.
And Politifacts is a hack site when it publishes a story without getting a clarification.