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Apple Owns $52.6 Billion In US Treasury Securities, More Than Mexico, Turkey or Norway (cnbc.com)
randomErr shares a report from CNBC: If Apple were a foreign country, CEO Tim Cook might have considerable political clout in the United States. That's because the tech giant owns $52.6 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, which would rank it among the top 25 major foreign holders, according to estimates from the Treasury Department and Apple's SEC filings released Wednesday. Apple's stake in U.S. government securities as of June, up from $41.7 billion as of last September, puts it ahead of Israel, Mexico and the Netherlands, according to Treasury data released last month, which tracks up to May of this year. With $20.1 billion in short-term Treasury securities and $31.35 billion in long-term marketable Treasury securities, Apple still falls far below countries like China and Japan, which hold over a trillion dollars in U.S. government debt each -- which has caused considerable hand-wringing in Washington. Still, Apple is way above other big companies like Amazon, which owns less than $5 billion in U.S. government or agency securities combined, according to regulatory filings.
It means China and Japan are keeping you economically afloat by funding your deficit spending. On the other hand, it means China and Japan have a strong vested interest in not having the US go bankrupt, or devalue the dollar massively by printing its way out of debt, so China is not likely to economically destroy your economy the way it otherwise could and might.
It's a kind of MAD situation. You better just hope that they do not decide at some point to stop pouring good money after bad, and if you keep going deep into the red because you are not producing enough economic value to sustain your expenditures, the chance of a Greece-like scenario on a vastly bigger scale becomes greater.