What I was considering is counting publicly held (completely non government so it would exclude the 2.8 trillion held by SS and other treasury bills held by government) Treasuries only, which directly affect the debt.

I think that what we saw in the last 8 years .. an explosion of debt and also treasury sales which show the debt to be growing at a much accelerated rate, even though it’s increased investment in tresuries that caused a lot of this, I think. And debt will explode much more when interest rates rise by enough, both pushing up more treasury investment and higher interest rates.

My largest concern about the debt is how it is and will be used as a tool to vastly cut social programs. We are in an environment where that argument appears to hold some water.

BTW, I seriously view money velocity as our most important metric of concern. I favor living wages, which I believe will do a lot for increasing money velocity, along with real infrastructure spending on hard items like dams, water systems, etc.