Who profits from the interest on the national debt? Is it the Chinese or..

...anyone who owns a savings bond, etc.

It's almost all T-Bills and bonds.

the interest just like on your morg. plus the principal back. So If China buys a bond we get his money, owe them the money they gave us for it plus the interest. Not congress but you and I.Congress and the President have no money but what we let them take from us. So we have paid and our children will pay for Bush's war and his rich friends getting tax cuts, and for the debt they make higher, and so it goes. And people say it does not pay to vote.

If you buy a home and pay the bank back plus int. you both may have got what you wanted. Bank owners money on their money and you a home. And also both have to take a risk, They, that your will pay, as they do not want the home they are in the business of money, but they do have the property to hold over your head and you as buyers have to behave and keep a job and the property good so you can pay and live there.The bigger your loan with the bank the more they will try to protect their money, so if you had 30 homes you were paying on, the bank would be very interested in just what you were doing, as you held a lot of their money. So we see where China becomes more important to us and we to them. Did I read they owned 40%?

with various maturity dates. These bonds are used as hedges in large portfolios held by institutions.

Little known to the general public, repurchase agreements ("repos") are a major money-maker for the handful of huge financial institutions. The value of repo trading actually dwarfs sales of stocks and bonds.

There was concern during the Clinton Administration that the decline in public debt issues was going to dry up the pool of available bonds used in repo trades. That might have put a crimp on the profits of the big banks and hedge funds that rely on this exclusive market.

Shrub came to the rescue.

When will they get sick of losing money to Bush's financial mess.

Japan was buying a ton of bonds when the yen was 103-105 per dollar, last year, and the dollar is currently about 105 yen. So the yen is essentially at the same level vs. the dollar that it was at this time last year. In the meantime, Japan has kept the dollar from sinking too low, and collected 4+% interest on its investment. 4% times $720 billion equals approximately $30 billion. Quite a tidy little sum, actually.