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In USA the national debt is pretty well documented but for Canada I don't find anything about who own it debt. I even have an economist friend who works for the government and cannot find these informations in his database. Does anyone have an idea or have some clues about this?

*canadian raises arm*
Mostly to Great Britan and China

My feeling is that the royal British family owns most of the Canadian debt. That's why we have the face of the queen on the dollar.

Similarly to the US, the majority of Canadian government debt is held by Canadian citizens.

 ::)
Completely false.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/15/us-debt-how-big-who-owns

Heh.  You didn't actually read that article did you?

in Billions
Federal Government $6475 (social security, government pensions, and other intergovernmental holdings)
Foreign Governments $5135
Investors $1229 (many may be offshore)
Mutual Funds $854
Private Pensions $586
State And Local $436
Depository Institutions $307 (banks and foreign banks in US)
Insurance Companies $254
State and Local Governments $189
Savings Bonds $185

It is not individuals it is government.  Government loaning themselves money.  Why do they do that?  They do that becasue the interest rate is lower than they create it.  Thus they make money.







 

;D
The majority of the U.S. debt is held by Canadian citizens?  I hadn't heard this before.  Do you have a reliable source for this information?
 ;)

I followed the link and found the following 2 quotes:



That second quote would seem to indicate that only 33.75% of the U.S. debt is held by entities outside of the U.S. and that the remaining 66% (which would seem to indicate a "majority") is held by entities within the U.S.

U.S. debt held by the U.S. Government is effectively nullified. It's like loaning yourself $10. That has two ramifications -- 1. U.S. debt is actually much lower than reported. 2. Debt held by foreigners is actually much higher (as a ratio) than reported.

It means the opposite. It means the government is lying about the state of its balance sheet.

There's supposedly a trust fund containing money from the payroll tax but what actually happened is that the government spent every penny of the collected money as it was received and has nothing more than empty promises to back up its commitment to retired seniors.

You can "nullify" that intergovernmental debt if you wish, but it means Social Security ceases to exist. Any way you look at it doing so is defaulting.

I think you'll find that I was commenting specifically on the article linked to, and not on the actual state of the U.S. debt.  The article was posted as proof that the majority of U.S. debt is not held by U.S. citizens, and I was simply pointing out that the article indicates that the majority of U.S. debt is held in the U.S.  Therefore, regardless of whether your assertions about the government loaning to itself are true, my statement that the article states the opposite of what knight22 indicated is still true. Note that the article posted says nothing about the government loaning to itself.