posted October 01, 2009 10:06 PM         

Who holds the publicly held debt?
About 60 percent of publicly held debt belongs to Americans. The other 40 percent is held by foreign lenders. China is the largest foreign lender and holds about $800 billion in treasuries (about 11 percent of total publicly held debt), followed closely by Japan at $725 billion (about 10 percent).

China has only recently become the United States’ largest lender, overtaking Japan in September 2008. China had been a distant second as recently as 2000, when it held less than 2 percent of all U.S. publicly held debt, compared to Japan’s 9 percent. Over the next several years, however, Chinese lenders began purchasing a greater and greater share of U.S. debt offerings, reaching close to 7 percent by the end of 2005 and 10 percent by the beginning of 2008.

No other country currently holds more than 3 percent of total publicly held U.S. debt.

holders of Treasury securities: http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

Presidential Salary a comparison:
•George Washington was paid a salary of $25,000 a year from 1789 to 1797 as the first president of the United States. The current salary of the president has recently been doubled to $400,000, to go with a $50,000 expense account, a generous pension and several other benefits. Has the remuneration improved?

Making a comparison using the CPI for 1790 shows that $25,000 corresponds to over $608,000 today, so the recent raise means current presidents have an equal command over consumer goods as the Father of the Country.

When comparing Washington's salary to an unskilled worker, or the measure of average income, GDP per capita, then the comparable numbers are $11.5 and $25 million. Granted that would not put him in the ranks of the top 25 executives today that make over $200 million. It would, however, be many times more than any elected official in this country is paid today. Finally, to show the "economic power" of his wage, we see that his salary as a share of GDP would rank him equivalent to $1.9 billion.
* http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

posted October 02, 2009 01:48 AM         

I had planned on a circle around, then a rant / closer about how nothing has been done as far as regs etc with the financial system. We are still at status quo.

Seems I have a fellow Jeffersonian fan.

He did indeed write quite a bit about being in this situation.