© The Associated Press/Evan VucciPresident Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
At the close of business on Aug. 31--for the first time in the history of the country--the publicly held debt of the federal government topped $10 trillion, according to
data released by the
U.S. Treasury Department at 4:00 p.m. yesterday.
During Obama's presidency, debt held by the public has now increased by $3.71694 trillion--or almost 59 percent from the $6.3073 trillion in debt held by the public that the government owed to its creditors on Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama was inaugurated.
Also, according to the most recent reports available from
the Treasury and the
Federal Reserve, approximately $6.1 trillion of that debt - or about 61 percent of it - is owned by foreign interests (led by the Chinese and the Japanese) and by the Federal Reserve.
At the close of business on Aug. 30,
as reported by the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt, the federal government's debt held by the public equaled $9,990,126,772,846.86. By the close of business on Aug. 31, it was $10,024,253,354,407.07.
The Treasury divides the debt of the U.S. government into two general categories:
"debt held by the public" and
"intragovermental" debt.