I did some research today on the outstanding US public debt – not because I think it is particularly important but because a journalist asked me yesterday during an interview – how much of the total US Treasury Debt is held by the US government – I said off the top of my head about 42 per cent which was a quick calculation based on work I did about 12 months ago and a rapid adding up off what I remembered from the monthly reports since then with a quick division thrown in. It turns out after I have updated the databases I keep that my “guesstimate” was not misleading (as at March 2011). The journalist then said – “so lets get this straight, the US government owes itself money equivalent to 42 per cent of its total outstanding liabilities?” Answer: yes. He then responded: “to fix the debt problem why wouldn’t they just write it off?”. Answer: I don’t see a US public debt problem. But because you do, then the answer is that for the most part they could just write it off as long as their were some additional legislative changes (for example, they would have to finance the operations of the US Federal Reserve in a different manner). So who owns the US debt?