It used to be that when the government ran budget deficits, it would finance that debt by selling bonds to Americans–so, most interest payments went to people in this country who had invested in the future of the nation.

Quick, blink a few times and look down the road just a few years. As the Economic Policy Institute tells us, at the end of 2001, “outstanding federal government debt totaled $3.3 trillion, 31% of it held by foreign lenders. Over the succeeding four years, the debt grew by $1.3 trillion, but borrowing from abroad accounted for more than 80% of the increase.”

Now, hold on to your wallters because it gets worse: “Using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections for different scenarios, a group of three organizations1 that track budget issues estimates that the federal debt will rise to $6.7 trillion by 2011 under current policies. If foreign lenders continue to buy 80% of new federal debt, the federal government will owe more than half—$3.8 trillion dollars—to foreign lenders by 2011, which is equivalent to 23% of expected gross domestic product that year.”

Of course, part of the reason the budget is out of whack is the outrageous tax cuts for the rich–which the Administration is trying to make permanent. Thanks to the fiscal policies of all those “patriots” in the Administration who wear little flag pins in their lapels, the country is slowly selling off its assets to other countries. Remember, this is not the fault of hundreds of millions of regular people abroad–this is the work of the global financial elite.

The rest of the EPI analysis is here.