TIC Data Shows More Foreign Purchases Of US Debt Paper

The US president can continue his spending spree as foreigners have been investing more of their money into US long term debt paper in May, the US Treasury reported on Moday. According to the press release, net foreign purchases of both domestic and foreign long-term securities were $60.0 billion in May compared with $47.8 billion in April. Net foreign purchases of long-term securities were $752.1 billion in the twelve months through May 2005 as compared to $737.2 billion during the twelve months through May 2004. Before today's figures, international investors purchased an average net $37.6 billion in U.S. financial assets each month over the past decade. Over the last three years, the average was $59.5 billion a month. For a report from Bloomberg on the TIC data click this link.
NOTE: All links will open in a new window.
For a table of net Treasury paper purchases since 1978, latest figure $55.5 billion, follow this link.
For a table of foreign purchases and sales of all long-term securities follow this link.
For the 2005 list list of major foreign holders of Treasury paper debt follow this link.
For the historical list of major foreign holders of Treasury paper debt follow this link.
For transactions with Bermuda follow this link.
For transactions with all other countries start out here.
If you are getting confused by now, go back to field #1, i.e. the Treasury International Capital System - Home Page, with many many more links. Or go to this other homepage with links to lots of codes.
If this does not help, have a look at the methodology explanations, which has more links.
And in case you will dare to make sense from future TIC data, look up the schedule here.
And don't blame me if your screen looks now like that:


I wish the US Treasury would adopt the website design and the data preparation from the BEA which offers their data in all commonly used data formats. Publishing data tables in text format was outphased in most other first class institutions together with the typewriter. In my ranting I shall also include the BLS which does not offer customer friendly data in spreadsheet format either. This applies to the data releases of the Federal Reserve Board too. But at least the Fed St. Louis does a terrific job in terms of data preparation. If they could only close the time gap between actual releases and the inclusion in their data series we would be a step closer to a better financial world.