The Bush administration talks about spending a million here and a billion there adding up to trillions for the war. Since the country is so far in debt, where is all this money they are talking about spending, coming from? I know it is borrowed, but from whom?
-- Dick, Howard City, Mich.
The money is borrowed from buyers of Treasury securities -- which are basically a big batch of IOUs that are auctioned off every three months. As the auction date approaches, the Treasury figures out how much it will need to pay off old debt and cover the government’s latest round of overspending.
When the auction day comes, buyers submit bids in the form of the interest rate they’re willing to accept. You can choose to make a competitive bid (you ask for a specific rate) or a non-competitive bid (you agree to accept the average rate of other winning bids.) When all the bids are in, the Treasury starts at the bottom, taking the lowest bids until it has collected enough money to cover that round of borrowing.
The money flows in from all over the place: from individual investors and corporations, pension funds and governments, both in the U.S. and around the world. Basically, anyone with a large amount of cash looking for a safe place to put it is a good candidate for holding U.S. Treasury debt.
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