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Why is Ireland the U.S. government’s third-largest creditor?
It’s no surprise that economic juggernauts China and Japan keep swapping places at the top of the list of biggest U.S. creditors. What might strike observers as odd, however, is that tiny Ireland has been lurking at No. 3 for more than a year. The country holds more than $310 billion in U.S. government paper, according to the Treasury International Capital, or TIC, report released on Monday. But Ireland’s ranking is puzzling given that economic heavyweights with deeper financial markets, including the United Kingdom and Germany, keep less Treasurys on their books than an arguably peripheral member of the ... (full story)