U.S. Department of the Treasury

(Archived Content)

TG-677

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today released the final results from the survey of foreign portfolio holdings of U.S. securities at end-June 2009 at http://www.treas.gov/tic/fpis.html. The annual survey was undertaken jointly by the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.   The next survey will be for end-June 2010, and preliminary data are expected to be released by February 28, 2011.    

Complementary surveys measuring U.S. holdings of foreign securities are also carried out annually.   Data from the most recent survey, reporting on securities held on year-end 2009, are currently being processed.   Preliminary results are expected to be reported by August 31, 2010.

Overall Results

The survey measured foreign holdings of U.S. securities as of June 30, 2009, to be $9,641 billion, with $2,252 billion held in U.S. equities, $6,240 billion in U.S. long-term debt securities ¹ (of which $1,260 billion are holdings of asset-backed securities (ABS) ² and $4,979 billion are holdings of non-ABS securities) and $1,149 billion held in U.S. short-term debt securities.   The previous survey, conducted as of June 30, 2008, measured foreign holdings to be $10,322 billion, with $2,969 billion in U.S. equities, $6,494 billion in U.S. long-term debt securities, and $858 billion in short-term U.S. debt securities (see Table 1).  

1.   Long-term debt securities have an original term-to-maturity of over one year.

2.   Asset-backed securities (ABS) are backed by pools of assets, such as pools of residential home mortgages or credit card receivables, which give the security owners claims against the cash flows generated by the underlying assets.   Unlike most other debt securities, these securities generally repay both principal and interest on a regular basis, reducing the principal outstanding with each payment cycle.

Table 1.   Foreign holdings of U.S. securities, by type of security, as of recent survey dates

(Billions of dollars)

Table 2.   Foreign holdings of U.S. securities, by country and type of security, for the major investing countries into the U.S., as of June 30, 2009

( Billions of dollars)

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*    Greater than zero but less than $500 million.

1.   Excludes Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, which are reported separately.

2.   Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates.

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