US Treasuries Have Become Unappetizing for Foreign Central Banks and Governments

https://wolfstreet.com/2026/09/17/treasuries-have-become-badly-unappetizing-for-foreign-central-banks-governments/

47•iamnothere•56m ago

Comments

1over137•38m ago

US everything has become unappetizing for everyone outside the US.

toomuchtodo•29m ago

Exorbitant privilege is a gift that lasts only as long as the trust does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635834 covers this succinctly:

> America was in practice running an empire that collected tribute from the rest of planet earth in exchange for entries in a database denominated in a currency they controlled and that was accepted everywhere. Really the only way it could go wrong is putting it under the control of someone who doesn't understand the kayfabe...

rpdillon•14m ago

And many of us inside the US as well, tbf.

paulsutter•34m ago

I was dismissive when I saw the title, but they have real statistics: foreign holdings are at 2012 levels while total treasuries outstanding are 3x larger.

freefolks•19m ago

treasuries are the same as cash. All that means is there is still too much USD Money supply from QE and rates will continue to go higher to reduce the supply.

lvl256•25m ago

I think RoW is trying to send a message to certain US constituents.

apercu•23m ago

RoW = Rest of World?

If so, those constituencies are immune to facts and common sense.

pnut•20m ago

Please don't make us decode your acronym https://www.acronymfinder.com/ROW.html

reenorap•13m ago

Yes, that's called Quantitative Easing after the Global Financial Crisis. The peak in the graph was 2008 after which the US issues a shit ton of debt which was bought by the Fed. China used to be the biggest holder of US Treasuries but now it's the Federal Reserve and Japan.

But the idea that you look at that graph as say it's "unappetizing" is dumb. Most foreign governments besides China have INCREASED their UST holdings. The only reason why the % is dropping is because of the massive amount bought by the Fed which messed up the %.

method_capital•9m ago

Yeah ... and exactly how many of our treasury auctions have failed? Zero. Overbid by foreign parties, all of them.

reenorap•4m ago

Every graph of foreign ownership is up and to the left over the last 10 years

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/foreign-treasury-...

Only China has gone down:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/foreign-treasury-...

I stand corrected about Japan it looks like they've been flat over the last 10+ YEARS

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/foreign-treasury-...

Basically the article linked above is dumb, and they either are stupid and don't understand what they're talking about or trying to cast a false narrative

llmslave•9m ago

US policy:

1. print money

2. suppress wages by shipping in cheap labor

3. reassure the population you arent doing the above

csomar•9m ago

The issue (real issue?) is that it’s unclear whether these governments reduced their holdings or switched them to these opaque structures (tether can be considered one). The idea is, it would be hard for the US to untangle true ownership. I wonder if UBO was getting undone blue or red because it’s a real threat for such a system but the US needs this “second” lifeline.

iamnothere•5m ago

Yes, and with this opacity, it becomes even harder for the US public to understand what’s happening and vote accordingly. Not that voters are given much of a choice on economic policy.

sidewndr46•2m ago

Are their sovereign states dumb enough to invest in Tether?

kelnos•3m ago

[delayed]

pfdietz•2m ago

This is how the dollar collapses. If this happens before the election, whoa nelly for the GOP.

Let your coding agents exchange nofollow backlinks

Dan Alistarh's Website (IST Austria Distributed Algorithms and Systems Lab)

Urban Bird Migration Hotspots: Study Reveals Role of Cities

Is-malicious: Jev helps you to not run malicous code

Anti-Clockwise

My Thoughts on AI and LLMs

Why Raccoons Have Been So Successful in Taking over Toronto

More than 900 killed in Gaza this year despite ceasefire

Chipotle is piloting a food safety platform with Palantir

ESP32 p4 pico and IMX477 camera

HyperFlow – one LoRA for all MiniMax-H3 tasks (ref2va/t2va/fl2va)

MÒ: A zero-dependency UI layer built with HTML, CSS and minimal JavaScript

Woman joins police chase by giving officer a lift in Nissan Micra

Compositor – The Photoshop Alternative for Mac

Open Letter: Minimum Conditions for Embedding Evaluators

Giant Wendy's franchisee Meritage Hospitality Group files for bankruptcy

Congrats, Arizonans You rank last in cussing, study finds

Systemd is a suite of basic building blocks

The Origins of Peanut Allergy

I had strings, but now I am free

How Notion handles concurrent editing with CRDTs

The Next Gene-Editing Technology May Also Be the Oldest

How Old-Time Radio Wrote Looney Tunes' Most Famous Lines [video]

Engrams Embedding Entendre: Codesign for Efficient DRAM/SSD Offloading

We made Playwright 2x faster and 80% more token efficient

Degit – Project Scaffolding

Show HN: Koi Editor Alpha

Show HN: Learn divergently/chaotically with tree-learn

Berkshire Hathaway, Inc

We Should Double-Check the AI Output: A Bug Which Wasn't

US Treasuries Have Become Unappetizing for Foreign Central Banks and Governments

Comments

Let your coding agents exchange nofollow backlinks

Dan Alistarh's Website (IST Austria Distributed Algorithms and Systems Lab)

Urban Bird Migration Hotspots: Study Reveals Role of Cities

Is-malicious: Jev helps you to not run malicous code

Anti-Clockwise

My Thoughts on AI and LLMs

Why Raccoons Have Been So Successful in Taking over Toronto

More than 900 killed in Gaza this year despite ceasefire

Chipotle is piloting a food safety platform with Palantir

ESP32 p4 pico and IMX477 camera

HyperFlow – one LoRA for all MiniMax-H3 tasks (ref2va/t2va/fl2va)

MÒ: A zero-dependency UI layer built with HTML, CSS and minimal JavaScript

Woman joins police chase by giving officer a lift in Nissan Micra

Compositor – The Photoshop Alternative for Mac

Open Letter: Minimum Conditions for Embedding Evaluators

Giant Wendy's franchisee Meritage Hospitality Group files for bankruptcy

Congrats, Arizonans You rank last in cussing, study finds

Systemd is a suite of basic building blocks

The Origins of Peanut Allergy

I had strings, but now I am free

How Notion handles concurrent editing with CRDTs

The Next Gene-Editing Technology May Also Be the Oldest

How Old-Time Radio Wrote Looney Tunes' Most Famous Lines [video]

Engrams Embedding Entendre: Codesign for Efficient DRAM/SSD Offloading

We made Playwright 2x faster and 80% more token efficient

Degit – Project Scaffolding

Show HN: Koi Editor Alpha

Show HN: Learn divergently/chaotically with tree-learn

Berkshire Hathaway, Inc

We Should Double-Check the AI Output: A Bug Which Wasn't