Japanese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities underscore the debtor/creditor link between the
United States and Japan. The U.S. government continues to incur budget deficits and the United
States as a whole maintains a low national savings rate; as a result, the United States has had to
rely increasingly on foreign creditors to finance the rising national debt. This has some potentially
problematic implications for U.S. interest rates. For example, if Japanese investors decided to
switch their foreign investment from U.S. Treasury securities to euro-denominated securities, or if
Japan’s savings rate should decline as older Japanese citizens spend down their savings, and
capital begins to flow back to Japan, U.S. interest rates would likely rise, all other factors
remaining unchanged.